Pleased to be sharing details of my first-ever solo art show in Ottawa.
“Downhome Seascapes” by Jenn Thornhill Verma
Opening reception takes place November 6th from 6-8pm Santini Gallery at 422 1/2 Preston Street in Little Italy in Ottawa. The exhibit will be on display November 5th-23rd. More details coming soon to the Santini Gallery website.
The show features oil landscapes as an ode to the coastlines of Newfoundland and Labrador where Thornhill Verma grew up and still considers home. Downhome, as locals call it, has endless seascapes that nook and cranny, dip and bob, pleasing to the heart, mind and soul. Atop the rocks of this place, on the eastern edge of North America, are saltbox houses, fishing stages and community wharfs. Below, are the marine life that lured settlers here for a life in the east coast fishery.
When people visit Newfoundland and Labrador these days, they come to experience a way of life—a life that, if not preserved through paintings and other art-forms, could be lost forever. Almost as soon as they arrived, people were leaving the outports and the fishery too. Thornhill Verma’s first book, “Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys” (Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press) covers this story—delving into what happened to Newfoundlanders like her own family after the region’s primary industry closed overnight.
That was a quarter of a century ago, and yet, this place still pops with colour—a vibrancy visible in Thornhill Verma’s paintings. The fishery remains active too, yet no fish species are anywhere near there historical levels of abundance. This show is the artist’s first solo exhibit. And yet, her paintings appear on the cover of her new book, released October-November 2019, as well as in magazines such as Atlantic Books Today and Newfoundland Quarterly.
Jenn Thornhill Verma 