New Work from Canada

This mixed media collage by Nancy Stevens will feature in the 2012 Legato exhibition at Cassino.  It draws on the rich cultural history of Italy, as well as the geographical extremes linked forever by the history of the Battles of Cassino.

The work has a mixture of relief and textured work, with contrasting colours and materials coming together to tell a fascinating tale using metaphor and historical references.

NANCY STEVENS

Nancy Stevens was a scholarship student at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and completed her art education at Mount Allison University with the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Employed by CBC Television as a graphics artist she continued to work part time after her marriage and while raising two daughters.  When time permitted she painted and began to exhibit her realistic acrylics. During the 1980’s she was represented by a major Toronto gallery where she had sell-out shows every two years.

Stevens left that successful career to experiment with media and methods which resulted in HORIZON PAINTINGS, a 1995 exhibition of abstract paintings at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and IN TRANSIT, an exploration of autobiography in 2001.  Her most recent exhibition, PATHWAYS, opened at the Art Gallery at St. Frances Xavier University in January 2010.  Her work is represented in significant private and public collections in Canada.

After a 15-year career of teaching drawing and painting, creative and critical thinking, Stevens lives in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia where her studio overlooks the ocean and her vineyard.

                                               ------------

Collage seemed like an appropriate medium to explore the meaning of Montecassino.   Layer upon layer, century after century, its history and culture evolved from a pagan temple to the richly embellished spiritual home of the Benedictines. More recently, Montecassino became a memorial to the tragic events in WWII which caused its destruction.  A tourist attraction today, the restored abbey is a reminder that in “the global village” war is not an option.