Elusive Plume

Elusive Plume is about unraveling and capturing the fragile complexity of a feather and its relationship to other natural objects. The feather specimens along with other collected organic pieces are the artist’s “treasures of nature,” as she likes to call them. They become stills for the small yet intricate scenes that are captured in her water-based monotypes. She loves playing with these objects, arranging them based on colour, size, form and patterns. Similar to yoga, painting a feather is very therapeutic and requires full concentration, a steady hand and total control of the brush. The delicate and weightless structure of the feather is a reminder of our own complex and vulnerable existence.

Sarka Buchl Stephenson is a Toronto-based artist, born in the Czech Republic. She is a graduate of OCAD, Toronto, and the Academy of Applied Arts, Prague, Czech Republic. She has exhibited her work throughout Ontario, including a group show in the Lonsdale Gallery, Toronto (2002), and solo shows at Latcham Gallery, Stouffville (2007), and McKay Art Centre, Unionville, Ontario (2011). She is currently an art instructor at The Frederick Varley Art Gallery, and her own art school called “Art Studio with Sarka”.