The Tarble Arts Center will host the Shona Macdonald art exhibit titled “Ground Covering”, as a part of their New and Emerging Artist series.

The exhibition showcases some of Macdonald’s surrealist paintings and drawings, featuring some combinations of both landscape and skyscape imagery.

Stefanie McCoy, a volunteer at Tarble, said she visited the exhibit earlier and said the artwork was interesting to look at.

“My first initial thought was that I thought it was very interesting,” McCoy said. “But I really like her pencil drawings, I taught those were fabulous, very detailed.”

McCoy said she liked how Macdonald was able to combine both landscape and skyscape into both the paintings and the drawings.

In the exhibit includes a variety of both canvas paintings, and sketches done by the artist featuring nature aspects in each.

“My favorite painting is called ‘Sky on Ground number six’, and I like it because of the colors and it seemed more realistic,” McCoy said. “My favorite drawings were called ‘Ground Covering’, it was the grind of 12 different drawings and just beautifully done.”

Sally Bock, the office administrator for Tarble, said she was impressed with the exhibition itself.

“I especially like her drawings,” Bock said. ”The paintings are very nice, but I think her drawings are exceptional. If you look at the detail within her drawings, I think that’s where her real art lies in my opinion and I’m not an artist.”

The drawings in the exhibition covered the same idea as the rest of the artwork; however, the materials used for them are quite different.

Macdonald uses silverpoint; an artistic medium using a silver rod inside a wooden pencil, meaning the artist is drawing using actual silver.

The paper used for the drawing was specifically meant for the use of silverpoint, and over time, the drawing begin to tarnish and it was evident in some of the drawings currently in the Tarble exhibition.

“I do like the colors in the paintings, they’re very muted, very calming and soothing,” Bock said. “I do like that of the paintings.”

Bock also said she thinks what Macdonald was trying to express through her art is getting people’s attention about nature itself through her artwork.

“I think that she’s just trying to really get people to pay attention to what is going on with the Earth and the different types of places we have,” Bock said.

Curt Starkey also visited the Macdonald exhibition and said he felt the same as McCoy, liking the drawings more than the paintings.

“I like the paintings, they’re interesting but I like the drawings a little bit better,” Starkey said. “I like things that are a bit more detailed, it’s a preference.”

Starkey also said he felt each of the works displayed the reflections of nature itself.

“To me, I think it had a reminiscent quality of Escher,” Starkey said. “What you see is not just what apparently there, it’s not the surface of water; it’s something else.”

Starkey said his favorite artwork from the exhibition were the drawings.

“The nice part about art is that everybody can have their own opinion and see different things in paintings and drawings,” Bock said.  “That’s one of the fascinating things about art and photos and paintings and drawings is that each person kind of has their own interpretation, that’s the wonderful things about it.”

The Macdonald exhibition will continue being showcase in Tarble until October 4th.

Luis Martinez can be reached at [email protected] or 581-2812