Landon Mackenzie is a nationally celebrated, Vancouver-based artist, admired for her large-scale paintings on canvas. Lesser known are her works on paper, which she produces as a tandem practice to her paintings, and often while away from her home. These ink and watercolour creations are spontaneous and free-form and speak to the deepest levels of the creative urge with minimal forethought or revision. As part of a national tour, Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey is now exhibiting at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

Born in the U.S. and raised in Toronto, Mackenzie studied printmaking at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. Some of her student etchings will be included in the show including layered works often featuring text, which shed light on some of her mature painting practice, in which she often writes words and phrases into the painting that later get covered over by marks and images.

After completing her MFA at Concordia University she turned to painting and her Lost River Series, which she began in 1981, was an overnight sensation. Mackenzie moved to teach at Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver in 1986. She travels each summer to work on P.E.I., and had the opportunity to work for part of the year in Berlin in 2013, and in the Canada Council Paris studio in 2009. Whenever she is on the road as a speaker or visiting artist she tends to work only on paper, but most of these works have rarely been exhibited. This exhibition provides the opportunity for audiences to delve deeply into this aspect of Mackenzie’s practice.

Mackenzie’s strengths as an artist are her inventive energy, her intellectual restlessness and curiosity, and her love of imagery, maps, language, and history. Landon Mackenzie: Parallel Journey is accompanied by a multi-authored, full-length book published by Black Dog Publishing in the U.K., with special support from the Audain Foundation.

Mackenzie’s survey exhibition will be highlighted at the Art Gallery’s Summer Exhibition Opening Gala, which takes place this Saturday, June 18 at 7 p.m. at Confederation Centre.

The Confederation Centre Art Gallery is looking for artists of all ages and disciplines, professional and non-professional, to register for its tenth annual Artist Trading Card event. Artist trading cards (ATCs) are miniature works of art. They can be created with any material imaginable. Cards can be made from paper, wool, wood, clay and more.

This year’s registration deadline is Monday, July 4. A week after registration, participants will be contacted to confirm the number of cards they are required to create for the event. If 50 people sign up for the program, participants will be requested to create 50 cards. Cards can be produced in editions (a limited number of the same card), series (set of cards with a unifying theme), or as singular originals.

The main requirement is the size: cards MUST be the same size as modern baseball cards or 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (6 cm x 9 cm), small enough to fit inside standard card-collector pockets, sleeves or sheets. ATCs must be self-produced. The artist’s name and contact information, as well as the card title and the edition or series number is to be written on the back.

Landon Mackenzie, a Vancouver-based Canadian artist with strong ties to Prince Edward Island, will be in attendance and will participate in the event. Parallel Journey, a major exhibition of Mackenzie’s works on paper is currently on view in the Art Gallery.

The tenth annual trading event will be held on Thursday, August 4 at 7 p.m. in the Gallery. Along with the card trading, there will be live music and a cash bar. More details on the evening’s program will be announced at a later date.

All ages are welcome to participate.

For more information, or to register, please contact Monique Lafontaine at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery by email at moniquel@confederationcentre.com.