The sizable and stirring paintings of Audrey McKinnon have reached new heights. They are all the way up on the fifth floor of City Hall.
This week the local painter had her works installed for a year-long exhibition in the place where the mayor and City's senior administration have their offices.
McKinnon is the latest in an annual rotation of Prince George visual artists who get to showcase their work on the fifth floor, as part of the Community Arts Council program called Artnerships that connect artists with businesses for long-term displays.
Mayor Lyn Hall made the connection as part of the cultural side of the 2015 Canada Winter Games. The inaugural artist was Lheidli T'enneh First Nation painter Jennifer Pighin, followed through the years by, in chronological order, Laura Chandler, Cher French, Kat Valcourt and now McKinnon.
"City Hall is a place you can really show art off, they have a lot of big spaces, a lot of interesting wall space in interesting rooms, a lot of different people coming and going all the time, they really need art in here, and it's a place where art really fits," said McKinnon, who tends to work on large-scale canvases. "So many people who never normally go out looking to see art will now get that exposure. That's a great use of City Hall."
Hall has been pleased with the annually refreshed look of the place, and enjoys that different kind of showcase that the City Hall's senior administration spaces can offer an artist.
"I wanted to open up to artists within the community," he said, knowing the Community Arts Council had the ability to bring forth the city's best. "We have a lot of traffic on the fifth floor. We wanted the artists in the community to have another place to show what they were doing, show their talents."
A recent addition has added to that artistic depth in that space. A large array of vintage photographs has been added on the fifth floor, all depicting black and white scenes of Prince George. These are permanent. It draws eyes in interest to the walls shared by the rotating artwork, so even more engagement is possible.
"So it's an interesting dichotomy of old heritage images and right next to it or on the wall over you could have a piece of modern art," Hall said.
"I came to the space and checked it out. I knew I wanted to do something impactful," said McKinnon. "All of these paintings, every single one of them, I did especially for this exhibition."
It's her most personal work yet, for the young veteran of the local arts scene. She often works with spray-paint, and she often works on surfaces much larger than herself, so ladders could be considered as much a tool of her artist's trade as her paintbrush.
And it was the paintbrush that drew forth these new images. Her current home studio (plus winter weather) is a room in the basement, which prevented her from using the spray-cans and wide vistas she is so comfortable with.
The works are still big, by the standards of most commercial artists, but she has to be able to get them in and out of her art room. She said that the restrictions actually made the process more animated for her. Like the writer who uses the deadline as motivation, she used her studio's limitations to ignite her creativity.
"I definitely wanted to go large, that was always part of my plan here," she said. "I got so excited about neon yellow and beige. I know, that's not something you normally hear, but I think this is a great place to get excited about beige. It's a colour with unusual depth, more than you'd realize, and I do think that parallels municipal politics. That wasn't intentional, but it works. What goes on in City Hall can be mistaken for tedious, but it's all about people's lives and how we live in our community."
"Audrey's work represents a more urban-style art, a youthful look," said Lisa Redpath who coordinates Artnerships for the Community Arts Council. "I've been a fan of Audrey's for many years, and we were looking for something fresh and in a different direction this year. She was a perfect fit."
