Press Release
Gallery Artist Series: Alice Hoskins and Paul Price
April 2 – 13, 2002

The watercolours of Alice Hoskins and the watercolours and oils of Paul Price are featured in the third show in a four part series focusing on gallery artists that opens Tuesday, April 2 at Lyghtesome Gallery, 166 Main St.
Well-known artist and art educator Alice Hoskins grew up in Montreal but spent many summers in Guysborough, N.S. and it was there as a small child that she first began to draw and paint. She studied fine art at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, Montreal, and the Montreal School of Art and Design under Arthur Lismer, subsequently completing a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Art Education from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, N.S> She served as Education Officer and then Education Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax for nine years, then went on to complete a graduate program in Leisure Studies at Dalhousie University.

For many years after establishing residence in the Antigonish area, Alice Hoskins taught art and art appreciation to both adults and children through the St. Francis Xavier University Art Gallery lecture programs and the Continuing Education Dept. at St. Francis Xavier University, including the Elder Hostel program, the summer Art Camp for children and numerous painting workshops. She has produced a number of commissioned works of familiar local buildings including a series of drawings of the St.F.X. campus, St. Ninian’s Cathedral and the Antigonish Town Hall.

Alice Hoskins now lives in Antigonish year-round but over her life she has traveled extensively, living in several provinces across Canada and spending two years teaching high school art in Australia. She has studied the Japanese language and culture and written two books about her travels in Japan that are illustrated with black and white sketches of the gardens, the statues, the temples and the people that she saw along her way.

Well known and highly respected for her work in watercolour, Alice Hoskins brings a bold and refreshing hand to her unconfined lanscapes, seascapes and floral studies, exercizing a carefree freedom of expression within a realistic mode. She likes to paint on location and the Antigonish area landscape figures prominently in her work.

Alice Hoskins has previously held solo shows at the Tatmagouche Branch Library, 1977, the Hector Center, Pictou, 1983, Zwickers Gallery, Halifax, 1984, Lyghtesome Gallery, 1985 and 1991, St. Francis Xavier Univ. Gallery, 1989 and 1993, the Elwood Gallery, Toronto, 1990 and the “A” Gallery, Truro, 1990. Her group exhibitions include several Montreal shows, the Maritime Art Association, the Contemporary Art Society of Nova Scotia, Lygthesome Gallery, the St. Francis Xavier University Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Albert White Gallery, Toronto. The Nova Scotia Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Coopers and Leybrand, Ryco Atlantic, CJFX Radio Station and the Bergengren Credit Union all have her work in their collections, as do numerous private collectors across Canada and in the U.S.

Paul Price is both a professional artist and an opthalmologist at St. Martha’s Hospital in Antigonish. Born June l, 1956, the son of a diplomat, in Washington, D.C., his interest in art began with early training in Illinois where his grandparents worked as silversmiths, and in Halifax, at age eleven when he first met and studied with artists C. Anthony and Jane Law. Price did further study at Hichschule fur Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria during high school and then later took courses in painting and printmaking at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, after receiving his MD degree from Dalhousie University in 1980. Although primarily known as an oil painter, Price works increasingly in watercolour and has produced a number of limited edition intaglio prints.

Well schooled in the Canadian expressionist landscape tradition, Paul Price captures the essence of sea, land and sky with confident color and a prudent eye for definitive rhythms in nature. A prolific painter, he also prefers to work on location, receiving as much information as possible directly from nature, traveling extensively throughout the Maritimes as well as the more extreme northern regions of Canada, including the Queen Charlotte Islands, northern Newfoundland and Labrador and Baffin Island.

Paul Price’s parallel careers of visual art and visual medicine have never been far apart. He exhibited his work during both his medical school internship and residency and has continued to exhibit in Halifax, Vancouver and Calgary in solo and group shows ever since. His most recent solo shows include a major exhibit at Studio 21 in Halifax in 1997, a retrospective show entitled “Four Seasons” at St. Francis Xavier University Art Gallery in 1998, and a large exhibit at the Kensington Fine Art Gallery in Calgary in 1999. His artwork has been featured twice on the cover of the Canadian Medical Association Journal as well as the No. 121, 2000 issue of The Antigonish Review. His work is held in collections throughout Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

The Alice Hoskins and Paul Price feature runs from April 2 – 13 and will be followed by a presentation of watercolours by Ron Hazell and watercolours, oils and etchings by Anna Syperek.