LYGHTESOME GALLERY is opening a satellite gallery space overlooking the beautiful island-dotted harbour of Guysborough Town, in the newly renovated Chedabucto Bay Mercantile Building. Serving the arts community of Antigonish and the Northern Shore region of Nova Scotia since l975, Lyghtesome Gallery has been a forerunner in promoting leading artists from across the Maritimes through its year-round exhibit schedule. LYGHTESOME EAST, the name of the new gallery extension in Guysborough, will follow in this tradition and feature an outstanding and diverse collection of original work by well-known Nova Scotian artists and artisans, including several from Guysborough County.

The opening exhibit entitled "Celebration by the Bay" is on-going from June through October, with an additional feature every six weeks of artists or artisans of special note. Taking Lyghtesome Gallery further east is an exciting opportunity to showcase first-rate oil, watercolour and mixed media painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture in stone, clay, bone and wood, all in spacious surroundings, infused with the history and beauty of Guysborough Town and County. This is only the beginning of the many artists that Lyghtesome Gallery would like to bring to attention in Guysborough.

“Celebration by the Bay” features work by accomplished Chedabucto Bay area artists, Steven Rhude, Simone Labuschagne, Barbara Brown-Conrod and Darren Bennett as well as work from a range of well known artists from other regions of the province including watercolours by Alice Hoskins, oil paintings by Paul Price and Charles Dawe, mixed media works by Julia Redgrave, etchings, oil and watercolour paintings by Anna Syperek, and oil paintings and serigraphs by Robert Rutherford, including his new editioned print entitled “Guysborough”, a view of the town from across the harbour. There are also two wilderness sites in Guysborough County depicted in limited edition reproductions from original watercolours by Alice Reed that appeared in her “Sacred Worth”touring exhibit , sponsored by the N.S. Nature Trust, to raise environmental awareness across the province. Award winning bird and wildlife photography by Lorris Keizer is on display along with outdoor carvings in stone by Joe Arsenault, wood sculpture by Ian Sherman and examples of Maritime ship models made by Marc Anthony Boudreau of Port Hawkesbury. Artist, writer and naturalist Linda Johns is represented by her acrylic paintings on paper and canvas as well as whalebone and clay sculpture. One of the Maritimes’ most accomplished Mi’kmaq artists, who has achieved national and international acclaim, Alan Syliboy of the Milbrook Reserve in Truro will be featured from August 6 - September 8 with special attention given to his paintings, serigraphs, and work in tile and leather, to be followed from September l7 - October 31 by a focus on the work of Julia Redgrave, whose abstract mixed media paintings break new ground in the exploration of colour, space, perspective and scale.