Exhibitions / Submissions

Current Exhibitions

Evelyn Knight

Gallery One, Two and Three

May 7 to June 11, 2022

The St. Thomas-Elgin Public Art Centre is pleased to present water colour paintings by Evelyn Knight.  This selection of artworks is available for sale.

Evelyn was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1925 and attended Alma college from 1946-1948.

“I spent a lot of time up in the art room. Our art teacher, Mrs. Knowles, had all these antique busts. She would sit you down in front of the bust, and then you would draw, and she would correct. That might go on for weeks. Everything that came out of there had to be done perfectly. You graduated through these antique busts, and then finally graduated to landscapes. And Miss Lang, who taught interior decorating, taught you to draw buildings. She instructed in a practical way.” - Evelyn Knight, excerpt from The Alma College Memory Project, almacollege.wordpress.com

On the Line

Gallery One and Two

June 18 to July 30, 2022

The inspiration for this exhibition comes from a 2016 episode of Revisionist History, by Malcolm Gladwell.  The episode, The Lady Vanishes, tells the story of the place of women artists (or lack thereof) throughout the history of art and art collecting.  The term, on the line, refers to the hanging of art.  A work of art displayed prominently in an exhibition and at eye level is considered on the line.

For far too long, women artists were not located on the line or in many exhibitions and public collections.  The Public Art Centre has and continues to place importance on collecting and exhibiting the works of women artists, both contemporary and historical.  This permanent collection exhibition is focused entirely on local and regional women artists, their work, and heir extraordinary determination to create.

"And She Can Cook..."

Josepha van den Anker

Gallery Three

June 18 to July 30, 2022

Josepha van den Anker, throughout four decades of her career, describes herself as a "figurative artist", a painter and printmaker.  Influenced by media imagery, archaic iconography, quotations by writiers and philosophers, her art often reflects a personal narrative... engaging the viewer in the psychological drama of human emotions and questioning the confines of self in the Power Politics of Society.  Born in Holland, JvdA is a naturalized Canadian Citizen.

An honour's Graduate of the Ontario College of Art, 1976, she has continuously exhibited in Canada, and while living in Ireland and Holland for several years.

Past Exhibitions

Merle "Ting" Tingley was born in Montreal in 1921 and is recognized as one of southwestern Ontario’s most influential cartoonists. He joined the Army Signals Corps in 1942, and in 1943 became staff cartoonist for The Khaki, the Canadian army’s official bilingual magazine.

In 1947 he bought a used motorcycle and toured the country showing his portfolio to numerous editors, before, out of desperation, he took a job retouching photographs at the London Free Press. Ting's fortunes improved when an editor on that paper noticed a cartoon Ting had drawn of the mayor during the municipal election. The editor was impressed with the drawing and Ting become the resident editorial cartoonist at the London Free Press until his retirement in 1986.

The Public Art Centre has more than 100 works by Ting in our permanent collection. These works document an extraordinary career and the political and societal events (locally, nationally and internationally) from the 1940’s to the 1990’s.