ZOOM | Spring 2019

THESE WORKS POINT
NOT JUST TO THE
TRANSITORY REALITY
OF LIFE BUT TO
THE TANGLES WE
FIND OURSELVES IN,
WHETHER SELF- OR
EXTERNALLY IMPOSED.
Sandy Kay’s influences have been
eclectic and her career extensive. In the
Tangled Web series we see a bright kind
of impressionism and a reverence for
the complex compositions that are all
around us in Nature.
Sandy was born in California and grew up on the East
Coast of the US before moving to Vancouver in 1999.
She has always had her own studio/gallery, including
a stint in Gallery Row on Granville Island. Her work
has found homes in such faraway places as England,
Germany, and Dubai.
Halfmoon Bay has her heart now, though, and the Tangled
Web series celebrates beauty and impermanence close
to home in a series of carefully chosen close-up images
from Smuggler Cove, the sorts of views you might
miss while hiking there if you’re watching your footing
or restraining a dog on a leash. These images slow us
down and help us focus. Many are of the bog created by
beaver activity. Of the dynamic impermanence of these
ecosystems, Kay explains (from her artist’s statement),
“The bog didn’t exist twenty years ago, and may not
be there twenty years from now. [It is] a dynamic and
complex environment which is a metaphor for our lives.”
Kay’s process is interesting and complex. She starts
with a detailed and realistic drawing on the canvas and
does a black, white, and grey painting to establish light
and depth. Working carefully around the misty and
sharp lines, she then adds colour in transparent glazes.
She works with only three primary colours, plus black
and white. Layering achieves other colours (purple and
green, for example).
“Working this way,” she says, “can create great
luminosity in the painting. Often the layers change in
hue depending on the ambient light in a room. This to
me mimics what happens outdoors as light changes in
the atmosphere.”
WORDS | NANCY PINCOMBE
spring 2019 13