Artwork produced by Hilary Johnstone, left, and Caron Dubnick. (Government House)

By Derek Cornet

retreat

Dubnick, Johnstone have artwork exhibited at Government House

Jul 11, 2023 | 6:00 PM

Government House in Regina is currently showcasing Retreat to Morning Lake, an art exhibit featuring two La Ronge area artists.

Back in 2021, visual artist Hilary Johnstone received a $6,400 Independent Artists grant from SK Arts to spend a week at a remote cabin creating drawings to base fabric works on. She invited fellow watercolour artist Caron Dubnick to join her and the two ventured out to Morning Lake Camp in June of that year.

Morning Lake is about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from La Ronge near Clam Lake.

“I said I’d like to have my expenses paid for renting a cabin at Morning Lake because it is some place I can drive to, but relatively remote and quiet and in a beautiful location. They paid for my cabin for a week,” Johnstone said.

“I invited Caron to come with me so it would be more fun and she’s very serious about her art, so we sketched every day, all day and then sometimes we would sit down by the dock at Morning Lake and sometimes we would go out on my canoe and camped overnight.”

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After the trip, both artists spent the 2021-2022 winter producing works of art. Johnstone produces works on fabric, while Dubnick focuses on watercolours. Their work from the retreat highlights the northern scenery and is meant to spread the word about how beautiful it is in northern Saskatchewan.

“When it was sunny, we would go out by the lake or on the canoe and we just produced a bunch of sketches,” Johnstone said. “We had no responsibilities that drew us away from doing our art. It was a real art retreat where other than making supper at night, we didn’t have our normal responsibilities to keep us away from doing art.”

Dubnick also spoke fondly of the retreat, noting herself and Johnstone often make trips together but never so art intensive as it was at Morning Lake. She mentioned it’s not only nice to have a second person to canoe with, but they were able to keep each other on track so they were completing the goals they set out to do.

“When I do a trip like that where you actually sit and paint … just on site, I just always feel I should do more of that. I like just painting on site and you do sort of get a different result,” Dubnick said.

“Even if you don’t use the sketch as a work of art, you look at things differently. When you go to paint it later, you have more of a memory because you have studied this little subject. You’ve studied it a little more in-depth because you sat and painted it rather than just snapped a photograph.”

Retreat to Morning Lake has been displayed at Government House since July 1 and will be available for viewing until Sept. 24. Both artists have previously had work showcased at Government House multiple times, including in the From La Ronge: Get To Know Us exhibit shown in 2021.

“If you are in the visual art field, the idea is to get people to look at it and to enjoy it and maybe see things you have enjoyed about these locations through your artwork,” Dubnick said.

“We were very lucky to get the summer months because there’s a lot of traffic through Government House during the holiday months, so we will have a lot of people become familiar with our work through this particular venue.”

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @saskjourno