A Solo Show in Lunenburg Finds the Quiet in Busy Streets
LUNENBURG, N.S. - On a rainy Saturday morning, the first visitors to Erin MacLeod's solo exhibition at Gallery on Pleasant were standing very close to the paintings. That is the right way to look at them. From across the room the canvases read as streets, canals and harbours. Up close they turn into thick, deliberate strokes: a tram that is three quick dabs of yellow, a crowd that is a row of blue marks.
The Halifax painter, who left a design career in 2014 to paint full time, has shown at the Lunenburg Art Gallery summer show several times. This is her first solo exhibition. It runs through July 1 and includes about twenty works made between 2018 and 2023.
The largest canvas in the room, "Tram Below the Sé, Lisbon", is a yellow tram turning under the twin towers of the cathedral. MacLeod says it took six weeks. "I drew the street in an hour, standing on the pavement," she explained at the opening. "Then I spent the six weeks deciding what to leave out." It was sold during the first week of the show.
The rest of the room is quieter. A canal in Burano, a lamp on a night wall and a narrow lane at dusk all depend on the same idea: the moment just before a street changes, when the light is leaving one side and a stranger is about to cross the frame. A small group of ink-and-wash drawings from her travel sketchbooks hangs beside the oils, so visitors can see where each painting began.
"Erin paints cities without making them postcards," said gallery director Margaret Fenwick. "There are people in these streets, but they are never posing. That is why collectors keep coming back to her work."
MacLeod will be at the gallery on the last two Saturdays of the show to talk about her process. Admission is free.