Al Gagne featured artist at spring art show

The Olds Art Club's annual Spring Show and Sale is coming up fast - April 8 and 9 at the Evergreen Centre.

Al Gagne, who lives west of Bowden, is this year's featured artist for the show, which will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 9.

Gagne, 76, is a retired graphic artist. He's been a member of the Olds Art Club for about five years.

Gagne got his start in painting back in the 1970s when he took a correspondence course while living in Calgary. He took at least one additional course at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

During his working life, Gagne did illustrations for everything from architectural work to signs.

"Now that I'm completely retired, I dabble in the art field - in painting," Gagne says. "I've got a studio in my garage and I spend most of my time in there."

Gagne figures he'll have 40 to 50 pieces in the show.

Most of those works will be done in acrylic paint. But there will also be some works done in pen and ink and even pencil crayon.

Gagne's favourite medium is acrylics, although he says he may take up oils again.

Unlike some other artists, Gagne likes the fact that acrylics dry quickly.

"Acrylic is fast-drying," he says. "Oil, if you did something, you've got to be patient; you've got to wait for the next day or something for it to dry so you can work on it again."

He also says another advantage is that artists can paint acrylics on a variety of media, including wood, paper and canvas, whereas in order to paint with oils on those other media (except for canvas), you'd have to apply a special preparation to the surface first.

Gagne also likes to work with pencil crayons, despite the fact he finds them challenging.

"To do a little piece - just a very little piece - you've got to look at about maybe 20, 30 hours' worth of work on it," he says.

"You have to keep going in one area, like a postage stamp. And the wax has to melt; so it has to sort of be hot - warm all the time. The wax has to melt in there. They don't operate (well) if they're cool."

Gagne loves working with pen and ink.

"When I was in the graphic arts department, a lot of my work was (done in) pen and ink; like, technical work in drawings. And it renders beautifully.

"You have to use a real smooth skin-type hard board. It renders nicely and I just love working with them," he says.

Quillwork - also known as lithographic work - also fascinates him.

"I took that in art school too," Gagne says. "The lithographic is all done with a quill, which is super fine, fine - like a human hair type of thing and you just do one stroke over the other.

"I just love pen and ink."