Abstract impressions of Red Deer are showing in an exhibit in Greece featuring Canadian women artists.
Five paintings by Red Deer artist Galia Kwetny were chosen for the group show that celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Canadian embassy in Athens.
Getting international attention for her work is exciting for Kwetny, personally, but is also a coup for Red Deer, said the local artist, whose large abstracted pieces were displayed in a solo show last winter at the Harris-Warke Gallery.
Sheltered, a Kwetny painting in the Athens exhibit, shows the aerial pattern of the Red Deer River and has the map of Red Deer scratched into the orange “oil field” background.
The work is so titled because of the shelter belts around local farm fields, and also because Kwetny said she “feels sheltered here.”
The artist of Jewish background emigrated to Alberta with her husband and children from Israel, after first leaving Russia.
Kwetny’s paintings have also been exhibited in Calgary’s Esker Foundation Gallery, and she believes it was this gallery’s curator who suggested she be included among the Canadian female artists spotlighted in Greece.
The Lure of the Local: Women Artists in the Canadian Land(scape) exhibition opened at an Athens gallery on Nov. 5, and will be running until Jan. 11.
Kwetny, who attended the show’s opening reception, along with dignitaries including former governor general Michaëlle Jean, said, “It was amazing! To participate in this show was a true honour.”