What could be more natural than artwork hanging on the walls of a house?
At the McIntyre Gallery, that’s exactly what you get: outstanding work by Canadian artists, hung on the walls of an old house in the Transition area, so that a visit to the gallery is a lot like visiting the home of a friend with really good taste in art–and not a lot of furniture!
The McIntyre Gallery was officially opened in November of 1985, which means it will celebrate its 15th anniversary this fall. Gallery owner Louise Durnford began it with no background in either art or running a gallery, but with a solid background in business–and made it work. She was already part-owner of the house, where a previous gallery had opened (and closed) within a year.
“I started from scratch,” she says, first putting together a stable of artists, then assembling a client list.
She wasn’t looking for a particular style of art for her gallery so much as a particular style of artist: someone who wasn’t already being shown in a local gallery–and someone she thought was deserving of that exposure.
From the very beginning, that has meant that many of the artists represented in the McIntyre Gallery are women. “In those days not a lot of women artists were showing in galleries,” Louise says. Although that’s less true today, even now, of the 19 artists the McIntyre Gallery shows, 15 are women.
The current list comprises Claudine Ascher, Martha Cole, Diane Collet, Jim Graham, Iris Hauser, Zach Hauser, Antoinette Herivel, Amanada Immelman, Cathy Lacey, Catherine Macaulay, Laureen Marchand, Connie Mitchell, Lorna Russell, Robert Senger, Sharlene Dee Stauffer, Susan Unger, Brian Volke and Debbie Wozniak.
Some of those artists have been with the gallery almost from the very beginning, Louise says, and over the years, their work has changed, grown, diversified and improved–as has the gallery as a whole.
Each artist has the opportunity for a new solo show approximately every 18 months to two years, Louise says. “Preparing a body of work takes time,” she points out. As well, most of the artists work at another job to support themselves, and must also deal with the same day-to-day concerns–illness, family matters, etc.–that the rest of us do.
Show openings are held six or seven times a year, Louise says. She makes an effort to schedule shows in such a way that they complement and contrast with each other, avoiding scheduling shows that are too similar back-to-back.
The house’s two-story structure allows her to have the main show on the main floor (carefully designed so that the strongest works appear in the locations the eyes are naturally drawn to when someone first enters), while placing a selection of works by the other gallery artists upstairs. Sometimes, if an artist doesn’t have enough new work to fill the downstairs space, Louise will run two shows simultaneously: a large show downstairs, and a smaller in one of the upstairs rooms. That’s currently the case, with Susan Unger’s Animals I Have Known: Interiors and Landscapes on display downstairs and Jim Graham’s Reflections upstairs (both continue until June 3).
In addition to solo exhibitions, Louise schedules group shows, often with a theme (such as last winter’s Flowers in February). There’ll be another group show this fall, coinciding with the 15th anniversary celebrations.
Visitors to the gallery range from people just interested in seeing the paintings to people who buy occasionally to collectors who are following a particular artist’s work and buy paintings regularly. Not all the gallery’s clients are from in Regina, either; Louise has several from outside the city, who she corresponds with via e-mail.
In fact, Louise has embraced high-tech methods to promote the gallery’s artists. In addition to creating her own Web site, she has long been creating photo CDs filled with works by her artists, scanning in color slides of the work or (if she’s desperate) taking photos of them with a digital camera. Having the works in digital format allows her to send images via e-mail to clients who she thinks may be interested in a particular artist or show.
For Louise, running the McIntyre Gallery these past 15 years has been a joy. “You’re working with beautiful things all the time,” she says. “And you meet a wide range of people, both artists and clients. Working with the artists on a regular basis is wonderful.”
That contact with artists and clients has changed her own appreciation of art. “You have to change,” Louise says. “Being flexible and growing and learning is important. The best artists are always challenging themselves and changing. When you’re working with people of that quality, you have to change, too.”
What hasn’t changed is her commitment to making the McIntyre Gallery the best it can be–much to the joy of the people of Regina who, like Louise, love beautiful things.
