Welcome Melissa Tulloch - Resident Artist

We, at the Art Gallery of Lambeth, would like to welcome our newest addition to our Resident Artist family.  Melissa has come to us all the way from the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.

Melissa was born in Toronto, and moved to the Lower Mainland of BC, settling in Richmond when she was five. Melissa became interested in art in high school where she was 

encouraged by her art teacher to pursue art as more than just a passing interest.


She loved art, loved talking about it, and loved learning about it. She talked often about what she was doing, and what she was learning about colours, hues, the techniques, and composition. Anyone could see her enthusiasm.


Her teacher was good for her, with his encouragement and teachings. When she graduated from high school, he helped her get a scholarship to Emily Carr University of Art & Design. 


When she graduated from Emily Carr, she traveled to parts of Europe. She was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. She spent time studying his work and even visited the Sistine Chapel in Italy to see his work first hand. 


She was inspired by other 'masters' of that time and genre as well, including Rembrant. She wanted to paint the way they did and with as much detail in her work as they did, especially with regards to the human body. She then carried the same passion for detail into the other aspects of her work.


She has painted with acrylics, and watercolours. 
She has even done tatoos for people on their body, one of which (believe it or not) is a rendering of 'The Last Supper' up the full side of a woman's body. But, by far, her favourite medium is oil. 


Melissa paints a wide range of subjects.  Her work includes birds, country scenes, landscapes, and seascapes.  But her love of painting and technical skill  is obvious in her portrayal of the human figure. Her works draw attention wherever they are shown.

When she looks at something that catches her eye, nothing escapes her.  Light and shadow, tone, and perspective;   she sees all of these things, and captures them on her canvas. 

"Pencil Crayons...Breaking Barriers and Mis-conceptions" -- Christine Johnson

May 5-30, 2015

Opening reception on Saturday May 9, 6-9 pm.

Always having a deep passion for art, Christine has developed and grown as an Artist in London over the last few years. Her works hangs in the Art Gallery of Lambeth, Westmount Art Centre and dozens of commissioned work hangs in homes in southwestern Ontario. Her work is widely displayed on line as "CJ Artwork" with thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram!

Her work shows her creativity and passion in her human portraits, endangered animal drawings, nature and spiritual works!

Using a unique perspective, angles and close-up images; she captures the overlooked and zoomed in intricate details of images in her work. Her one of kind iris eye portraits seem to grasp and convey a hidden universe or life within the individual eye. She brings awareness and love to the viewer with her variety of endangered animal pieces. Again, her technique of close-up detail expresses the animals’ strength and beauty in intricate details.

Using her medium of choice, the Pencil Crayon, she breaks the misconception and borders that pencil crayons are merely an amateur or an elementary medium that we all used when we were younger. As her skill develops, she consistently makes the viewer ponder and wow at the achievement of realism that is reached in her work. She also expresses a love for using ink, graphite, acrylic paint and charcoal in her work.

Expression in ones self in creating any piece of art is therapeutic, spiritual, fun and self-healing. Christine has begun sharing and teaches her mandala drawing classes at the AGL in a step-by-step class. As this is an art form that is very much unique to the individual, she teaches the basic, simple and relaxing pencil crayon tools and techniques so that any beginner artist can create their own beautiful mandala!"

Welcome Elaine (Laney) Richmond - Guest Artist

Dining Room

Elaine (Laney) Honey Zwickel was born in St.Thomas where she attended art classes at a very young age at Alma College.  She moved and grew up in London, Ontario.  She was uniquely talented and studied art at Beal Art School, where she blossomed.  She credits much of her enthusiam to the incredible teachers there.

Elaine married and raised her children in a world where art was central.  She studied pottery and practiced for 7 years.  She also owned her own boutique, "Miscellaneous", where her creativity continued to flow.  Travel was also a huge part of her life and an inspiration for many of Laney's artworks.

Blue Lagoon

Laney's attention to detail and her ability to add several dimensions creates a whimsy that always takes your breath away.

In 2004, Laney went in for bi-lateral knee transplants.  Hours after surgery, while in the hospital she suffered a devasting stroke.  Laney was diagnosed with aphasia.  She could not write or speak.  Now, she can walk and talk, and paint!

Little Blues

Initally, post stroke, she had to be motivated to produce more artwork by her son.  Now in her 7th year of recovery, her attention to detail has surpasssed her pre stroke art. The difference in her painting style during these last seven years is quite profound.  Laney feels her need to do artwork is even stronger than it was before.

Welcome John Koyounian - Guest Artist

The AGL would like to welcome John Koyounian as one of our newest Guest Artists:

Details in the Fabric

For many years John has used the traditional method of the triptych to propel his narrative. Often grouping symbols that at times seem both ambiguous and mysterious in order to create a dialogue with the viewer.  These panels/symbols compete with each other and demand our attention simultaneously.  However, we cannot mentally internalize each symbol and or marking simultaneously and that is where the conflict begins.

Talk of the Town

He has recently moved to layering images physically over top of one another, sometimes this image is represented in a hard contour line and at other times developed as part of the negative space matching the tone of the original substrat.  The symbol exposes itself to the viewer, yet is silent in its presence. Not unlike Plato's Cave, they are names of things that we cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.  The viewer makes inferences for things that are not truly there, we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects.  But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp mentally were on the same level as the things we physically perceive in the material world.  The contour shapes of objects over the drawing or paintings are much like the things we do not speak of and carry within our person.  At times the silence of these shapes is based on suppressed feelings in order to protect ourselves for fear of reprisals from others.

John's Artist Statement:

My work focuses on the use of narrative elements to not only physically convey a concern/observation, but also to imply an intrusion of the viewer into private events.  The characters are cropped much like a fragment in time or like a frame in a movie.  Most often the characters are devoid of facial recognition to suggest a greater universal experience.

Days of Autumn

Feature Artist for September: Linda Rempel

Linda is definitively a portrait artist. She can capture the sense of a person with her pencils. She has a unique perception of the subject and can make that portrait come alive. 

Uncle George - Graphite on Smooth Bristol

Here is what has been happening with Linda this summer ….

While at a family reunion in June I spotted a great photo of my husband's uncle, whom I've never met - he died at 59; he would have been 95 this year. His face had such character that I had to put him to pencil ... I was surprised at how many family members I could see in his face as I worked on the drawing and I now feel as if I've had a 'visit' with him:))

Anna - Graphite on Smooth Bristol

This little charmer is the four-month-old daughter of a dear friend. Several years ago I started doing baby portraits of the 'new arrivals' in our church nursery. We hang them on the entrance wall in the nursery and then in a few months give them to the parents as the church family's gift to them. This little sweethearts' mum left our church family and moved away to the Netherlands to get married several years ago, and has happily started her family there;  I have already done a portrait of their first son a year or so ago and have now had the pleasure of doing one of their new little girl. This portrait will wing it’s way across the ocean this week. 

I’ve wanted to capture another big cat on paper for a while now and this fellow is coming along nicely. The drawing is not small  (16 x 20) and because of this is not very portable, so he gets attention when my basement studio isn’t too cool to work in this summer. I originally started it on white bristol but at the 4 hour mark decided that it may be better on coloured paper. I went with Stonehenge paper, which has a nice smooth surface but still plenty of tooth to hold layers of graphite and white pencil crayon. I started with a basic pencil sketch placing the main elements of the image and then work from upper left to lower right laying in the individual hairs and eye detail in graphite and coloured pencil.  I hope to have this completed by the end of the summer to add to the AGL.

Be sure to drop by the AGL this September to see Linda and her work in person.  She will be coming in to the gallery every Friday afternoon during the month.

Hope to see you there!!