Experience the wonder and joy of Vancouver Island’s natural beauty through the paintings of Lisa Riehl. Lisa has created a masterful collection of oil and acrylic paintings of the island, from majestic old growth trees and forests to the beaches of the wild west coast. Being immersed in nature is a powerful thing and sometimes evokes very strong emotions. See the island from the point of view of the artist, through a lens that makes everything brighter and more intense.

A unique feature of this show are Haiku poems that have been specially crafted by Lisa to pair with each painting. Haikus are short Japanese poems inspired by the emotion of the moment – they can help expose deep emotions and also gain a different perspective. Through these poems and the phrases she chooses as titles for each of her paintings, Lisa shares with you what she feels with each scene she has created. It may be something completely different from what you

Growth & Knowledge is an exhibition that displays the path toward finding the style, mood, and concepts that I came to incorporate into my art practice. After experimenting with multiple types of mediums and subject matter in art school, I began working with watercolour and ink depicting representational subjects. From there, I worked on a series called Contemporary Portraits, in which I created modernized versions of historical paintings. While working on this series I used information and findings from my education in Studies in Women and Gender, taking into consideration the objectification of women and the male gaze that felt so catered to in historical portraiture. 

As I worked on the Contemporary Portraits series, I realized my love for narrative artwork and artwork that can tell a story or hold a narrative. I enjoyed hearing other people’s interpretations of what the artwork was saying and appreciated the fact that each person could have their own opinion