Creemore artist shows array of this year's work

An array of art by Ruth Ann Pearce is on display in the gallery at Curiosity House Books this month.

Pearce is showing a range of works in three sets, each with a different style. From her artistic roots in high realism pencil drawings to stylized ink drawings and fully digital creations, the 46 pieces in Array are the product of the past year’s work for the Creemore based artist.

Pearce said realism was the focus of her studies at university.

“It wasn’t until after university that I started experimenting with inks and graphics,” said Pearce. She said she is also influenced by her husband, graphic designer Michael L’Ecuyer, and has been branching out into illustration and graphic design.

Together, the couple established a business in Creemore five years ago named coloveration.

As Pearce and L’Ecuyer were expecting their first child, Pearce worked away at creating an alphabet with digital bird illustrations for their son’s room. The birds, one for each letter of the alphabet, are included in the show as Bird Type, but without the letters. The images proved to be very popular with several of the pieces selling in the first hour of the show.

Pearce said she began drawing with ink, as shown in the Petite Fruit and Petite Vegetable series, as a way of relaxing.

“My [realism] work is so highly detailed that it’s painstaking,” she said. “I have to build covers for every piece that I do because if dust lands on it, it could mess up my entire piece. You have to work in a very sterile environment for my high realism stuff and I wanted to counteract that part of my brain and relax a little bit and be able to make mistakes and have fun with ink dropping all over the place and getting dirty.”

The realistic drawings of wildlife in the Forest Shadow series are created in layers using coloured pencils. Done completely by hand, each piece takes 60-70 hours, building layers of colour in sections from lightest to darkest.

The show continues until August 30.