Barbara Sprague

I visited my friend Barbara over the weekend. She is preparing an exhibit of her drawings that will open this fall at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Barb and I were close friends when we both lived in Kenora in North Western Ontario. We shared a studio together and traveled back and forth from Kenora to Thunder Bay in order to complete our BFA degrees from Lakehead University. Now Barbara and her husband live in Southampton which is just a ferry trip and a bit away. It was wonderful to see them again.

The exhibit she is preparing is entitled The Dress, and the drawings explore the importance of the matriarchal line personally and within western society. The artist has included portraits of herself, her mother, her grandmother, and also of her daughters and her grand daughters linked to a female skeleton within the format of pattern pieces of her own wedding dress. Inside these dense and well crafted drawings there are many dualities. Strength and fragility, fantasy and reality, dream and determination.

These are details from the last two large drawings. (40" high) I asked Barb if I could show them here and she gave me permission. We checked the Thunder Bay Art Gallery's web site and there is nothing up yet about this exhibit, but the dates are September 14 till October 28. Another friend, Rosemary Sloot, will be showing The Immigrant exhibition at the TBAG during the same time period.