New exhibit focusing on relationships opens at Williams Mill Gallery today

Tina Newlove holds a solo exhibition, Crowd, at the Williams Mill Gallery in Glen Williams, beginning today (April 11) and continuing to April 29. Having a solo exhibition at the Williams Mill Gallery is a homecoming for Newlove who lived in the Glen until she was 15. During that time she pursued her love of art by taking instruction from local artists Doreen Fitzgibbon (oil painting), Gretchen Day (watercolour) and Wendy Buykes (pen & ink). Each one brought a unique and important outlook on art making that Newlove says she still draws on today. Crowd is an intense and thought-provoking exhibition based on relationship both intimate and distant. Paintings of crowds in claustrophobic city settings and cutout solitary charcoal figures are caught in moments of contemplation, anxiety or in mid-conversation with unseen counterparts. These works play with the vulnerability of the individual in city or intimate home-life situations. Newlove has been working as a professional artist since 1996 when she graduated with distinction from the Honours Fine Art program at McMaster University in Hamilton. Since 1993 she has exhibited her work annually in solo and group exhibitions building up a following of art lovers and collectors who look forward to her next presentation. Organizing My Mind 2005, oil & silver leaf, is now part of the City of Toronto's permanent collection. Her paintings have been accepted into over 70 juried exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, as well as receiving awards within the exhibitions. Newlove paints mainly in oil on wood, canvas and paper. She assembles pieces with stitching (which binds her thoughts together), silver leaf (because it tarnishes), gold leaf (because it doesn't), dictionaries, wood, bronze and fabric. Her love of the written word has caused her to use actual dictionary pages as the basis of some of her paintings; titles are often woven from the poetry she writes; images from her past are incorporated into paintings of sorrow. While she cherishes the beautiful, the delicate, the detailed, the organic and the non-violent, she often paints her experience with violence, despair, the poor and the war-torn. "I entice the viewer with beautiful colours, startle them with harsh reality and leave them with the impression of a vision," she said. The opening reception for Newlove's new exhibition will be held on Saturday, April 14, 2-5 p.m. The Williams Mill Gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For details go to www.williamsmill.com (905873-8203) or www.tinanewlove.com.