Friends of wwp support member Janice Poltrick Donato's one woman show

Last Wednesday wwp members turned out in force to attend the opening reception of Janice Poltrick Donato's one woman show at the Gallerie de la Ville in DDO. In addition to showcasing Janice's tremendous artistic range and enormous talent as a drawer and painter, the 40 works on display paid tribute to her family and friends. In effect, what viewers were treated to was an intimate look at family life and dynamics: the bonds of love, youth and aging, the everyday dramas, and those pivotal moments that leave their indelible mark on how our lives unfold from here. Above all, this was a tribute to the genre of portraiture and those who attended the reception were lucky to see many of Janice's subjects in person.

The star of the show was undoubtedly Janice's mother, Mary (pictured centre in the first photo), and we watched Mary grow from girl to young wife and mother to the person she is today. Janice has an uncanny ability to capture the tiny minutiae of the face and one of the lasting impressions of this show are skin textures, the glint in an eye and sunlight hitting an eyelash. Equally, Janice offers an intimate glimpse into the spirit of the person she is drawing or painting.

This is a show that is well worth taking a trip out to (see details of gallery hours and location on posting below) and we urge you to go and see the magnificent oeuvres that constitute Janice's opus. It was great to see so many wwp members at the event and special thanks go out to Wendy for capturing the show in the photographs below. We will give Wendy the final word... "I was really impressed with the exhibit, Janice has some really beautiful paintings, her mom looked so sweet, and I felt like crying when I saw her there, it was so touching and so family oriented. It was her life in a room."





































A personal note of thanks from Janice to our members...

"Greetings to all you fellow wine-drinking, sister-encouraging philosophers! And thank you for your support at the vernissage of my portrait show 'The Crucible'. It is a risky venture in many ways to expose oneself and one's work in a public forum like that, and I was juggling doubts and anxiety for months leading up to it. By your presence, your interest and your smiling faces you made it a worthwhile and enjoyable experience for me, as I hope it was for all of you. Thanks Wendy, for capturing the moment with your great photos."

Janice Poltrick Donato's one-woman show - The Crucible

Dear wwp friends,
As promised at the last salon evening, please find below an invitation to the vernissage of wwp member and resident artist Janice Poltrick Donato's one-woman show - The Crucible...It takes place next Wednesday, February 16, from 8-10pm, and all are invited to attend. If you know of any other people who would be interested, please don't hesitate to send this invitation on to them. And if you can't make the vernissage but are interested in seeing the show, it goes till mid-March - see the invite for gallery hours.
Looking forward to seeing as many of our wine women and philosophy friends as possible at the vernissage.
Linnet and Rona

galerie de la ville

centre des arts de dollard centre for the arts

12001 boul. de Salaberry , DDO, que, H9B 2A7

514-684-1012 ext. 298, www.centreartdollard.com

Media Release January 24, 2011

Galerie de la Ville presents in February-March an exhibition of recent oil paintings, pastels and pencil drawings by Janice Poltrick Donato entitled ‘The Crucible”. While the portrait is an art form that deals with likeness and speaks to the individual being portrayed, it is also a representation of what the artist sees when looking through the window of her sitter’s eyes. In Poltrick Donato’s case, her main sitter is also her mother, a woman with a rich and full history in the grips of the ageing process. The complexity of the interaction between them is at the core of the portraits on display in this exhibition. Poltrick Donato is the daughter paying tribute to her mother’s life, she is the observer/caretaker watching experience narrow and memory fade, and she is the artist exploring physical and spiritual change through colour and form.

Janice Poltrick Donato, a graduate of John Abbott and Dawson Colleges, has worked as an illustrator particularly of children’s books, and as a muralist. She is currently pursuing a double major in Studio Arts and Theology at Concordia University, exploring the connection between creativity and spirituality. She is a member of the Lakeshore Artists Association.

The opening reception for this exhibition will be held on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 from 8 to 10 pm. The exhibition will run from Thursday, February 17 to Sunday, March 20, 2011 at Galerie de la Ville, located in the lower level of the Dollard Cultural Centre, at 12001 de Salaberry Boulevard, in Dollard-des-Ormeaux (Hwy 40 west, Boul. Des Sources north, de Salaberry west, corner Lake).

Opening hours are Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 12 to 4 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays from 2 to 5 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. For further information, or to arrange free, guided tours of this exhibition for your group of six or more people, please call 514-684-1012, extension 298 or consult our web site at www.dollardartcentre.com/gallery.

wine women and philosophy takes flight in new directions

wine women and philosophy is in the process of shifting its focus from weekend getaways to project-based initiatives. We have always seen wwp as a vibrant collective - the multifarious talents and combined energies of our growing membership having confirmed for us over the past two years that this is what wine women and philosophy truly is.

Within our membership there are women with wide and varied interests and this has prompted us to move in the direction of creating different wings of wine women and philosophy where projects involving music, art, the DIY movement and philosophy - both as a study in itself but equally as a thread running through these other wings - are conceived, hatched and then nurtured.

As you may already know, wine women and philosophy has an ongoing choir that came out of one of our very first weekends back in March 2009, and a band - The Elegant Hedgehogs - that was formed after a group of women eager to play music together came up to the Nurtury to jam for a couple of days last summer. A weekend of painting this past Autumn forged a lasting link between those who participated in this activity and future plein air painting outings are being planned. In addition, our weekend painters became interested in the women of Beaver Hall - a group of female painters including Prudence Heward, Anne Savage and Sarah Robertson who painted in and around the Montreal area in the first half of the twentieth century - and have since seeded the roots of a small 'recuperative' history project aimed at learning more about this group of inspiring and talented and sadly, largely overlooked, modernist painters.

This past Christmas a wwp table runner project was launched to honour the ongoing support of our members and to celebrate our achievements thus far. Within the next couple of months the table runner project will be up and running with members coming together both in Montreal and up at the Nurtury to quilt and embroider it into being. A wine women and philosophy cook book full of recipes from our daytime and weekend getaways is in the pipeline, the proceeds of which will go to our bursary programme - the Marcelle Foundation. And of course, our bi-monthly salon evenings continue to thrive and our membership continues to grow, all of which keeps philosophy as a conversational form and activity alive and well. There is even talk of starting a philosophy club for those who want to do philosophy on a more regular basis, and a Wednesday Walks series for those interested in ambulatory - or peripatetic - philosophy.

As you can see there is much in the works. Among the questions that we are asking ourselves at this junction are how best to use the Nurtury as a kind of club house in which to pursue these various wings of activity? - and how to ensure that the vibrant and exciting community of women that has grown out of our getaways can continue to pool its collective energies in this next stage of our development? During this time of change and rejuvenation we invite you to be part of the conversation we are having with regard to this new direction and to share with us how you see wine women and philosophy evolving in the future.