Landmarks: Mary Smith McCulloch

September 20 to November 20, 2005

The Kelowna Art Gallery is very pleased to present the exhibition Landmarks. This is the Gallery’s first solo exhibition in nearly two decades of the work of Mary Smith McCulloch.

Mary Smith McCulloch is an internationally exhibiting artist who has resided in Kelowna since 1970. Born in Ardrishaig, Argyll in Scotland, she received her Diploma of Art in printmaking and a Diploma in Art Education from the Glasgow School of Art in the mid 1960s. She began her career as a professor in the Fine Art Department at Okanagan University College in Kelowna in 1973. Respected both as an artist and printmaking professor, she recently retired from a 27-year tenure and is now Professor Emeritus at the new UBC Okanagan. Mary Smith McCulloch is important to the Kelowna art scene and to the printmaking community at large.

Landmarks features several series of prints produced by Mary Smith McCulloch over the past 20 years. Mary’s work is influenced by the landscape and heritage of her Scottish ancestors and by the Okanagan landscape. Orchards, vineyards, trestles, cliff forms, standing stones and celtic crosses are some of the natural and man-made landmarks that Mary has incorporated into her life-long dedication to her chosen medium of printmaking. Equally important to her investigations are her concerns regarding history and the impact of civilization’s footprint, past and present, on the landscape. Currently in the Okanagan, we are all witness to the changes development and urban growth have on the landscape. The work of Mary Smith McCulloch visually and spiritually links these and other marks on the land to real and imagined landscapes of the past and future.

Linda Sawchyn
Curator