The Southampton Art Gallery and School will be introducing its biggest undertaking with the opening of the Shilling Experience this weekend.
Director Aly Boltman says they’ve been lucky to secure the works of Arthur Shilling, a native artist from the Orillia area, who trained at the Southampton Art School in 1957.
She says Shilling is a Canadian aboriginal art legend, who died at a very young age in the 1980’s.
Boltman says his style is very colourful, and it’s not the traditional type of aboriginal art we’re familiar with.
She says he was a very talented portrait painter.
Boltman says his children, who were about 7 and 8 years old when Shilling died, visited the Gallery last fall, and became very excited about the work being done there.
After that, they began the planning for an exhibit of their father’s work.
Boltman says it will be a multi-generational exhibit of Arthur’s work, and the work of his two sons, who followed in their father’s footsteps.
Boltman says the key thing that’s going to draw people to this exhibit is the number of works they have to display.
She says it’s rare to have a collection of Shilling’s work this large, and that’s mostly thanks to some loans from his wife that have never been viewed in public before.
The Shilling Experience: Past and Present opens Friday August 6th and runs through to September 6th.
The exhibit will be open daily from 10 AM until 4 PM, except for Sundays and holidays.
