Sally Podmore is a self-taught artist living in Cumberland on Vancouver Island. Her vibrant, impressionistic painting style has evolved in an ongoing conversation with her natural surroundings. Sally’s art centers around the interrelations between place and ways of being, exploring landscape as an encounter and a source of personal and spiritual significance.
On display/for sale at the festival, I would have original paintings, archival prints on pressed cotton, cards, hats as well as beautiful quick-dry towels printed with my art made from 100% recycled water bottles. Prices range from $5 - $3000, so there is a wide variety. My paper prints are my most popular item ranging between $75-100. Sally Podmore’s paintings explore the narratives between a sense of place, humanity, and the resilience of the natural world. Her study of the relationships of and with the land is an extension of her studies in Geography and Intercultural Education. Her work is rooted in the understanding of landscape both as an encounter and the source of deep personal and cultural significance. With acrylic on canvas, Podmore constructs and expresses the movement, texture, and energy of organic forms with lush patterns and vibrant brushwork. Themes of hot and cool, joy and foreboding as being experienced in our shifting climate, play out in Podmore’s paintings in a balance of exaggerated ‘unseasonal’ color work and rich use of material. Deliberate use of scale and intensity invites the viewer to experience an immersive sense-memory of being in place. The broader landscape becomes filtered through the emotional landscape and animated with the transcendent meaning of the wild. Podmore’s work is an expression of change, renewal, and growth; a window to a sacred wilderness within.