By Gilbert A. Bouchard

Nola Cassady is nothing but confident going into the 13th annual exhibition of the Edmonton Contemporary Artist Society.

She’s marking her debut as a full displaying member of the group with a relatively small still life called After Vermeer, one of her most recent series of paintings exploring common domestic items like eggs, book and plain-fabric tablecloths.

This seems a daring move given that ECAS is famous for sprawling displays of large paintings by abstract artists like Graham Peacock and Dick Der, huge sculptures by the likes of Peter Hide and large landscapes by Gerald Faulder. But Cassady sees her work as a natural addition to the group’s inherent diversity.

“The ECAS show has always had a lot of range, showing work from the abstract to the figurative, the very large to the very tiny,” says the 32-year-old artist.

Ryan McCourt, a fellow University of Alberta fine art graduate who started off producing abstract work, is also veering away from the typical tact taken with steel sculpture in Edmonton. His 2005 ECAS exhibit piece is a figurative, narrative-based piece detailing the raising of the Hindu god Ganesh.

“The nice thing about the representational work like mine and Nola’s is that it gives an audience some opportunity to engage with work that is a bit more gettable than the abstracts and ha a bit more of a story,” McCourt says. “It isn’t always familiar, but it can usually be discovered if you dig a bit.”

Cassady says she “was way more nervous last year (as an invited guest at the 12th annual ECAS show) where I displayed the exhibit’s only portrait, but that ended up being a real positive experience.”

She was recently short-listed for the Kingston Prize for Contemporary Canadian Portraiture.

Q: So Nola, how would you describe this most recent series of still lifes you’ve been working on?

I call these everyday still lives filled with everyday objects. At the moment, my studio is filled with bowls, eggs and a cabinet full of tablecloths and all kinds of books. I really believe it’s important that daily life be shown and appreciated in visual arts.

I’d also call myself a drawer. While I try to make these still lives as painterly as possible, the drawn line is pretty important to me and pretty prominent in my work.

Q: How long have you been painting these still lifes?

Since I was in the BFA program (Cassady graduated from the U of A in 1997). I alternate between painting these small still lives and my much larger portraits. Sometimes I combine both and will sneak a still life in a portrait. I used to struggle with the divide between the two types of work that I want to do, but lately I’ve come to realize that I need both.

Q: Where do you see your artwork going in the future?

I certainly want to keep working with the still-life and portrait forms.

I’m especially interested in figuring out how to improve my processes, especially when it comes to getting my still-life “characters” down pat and trying to figure out why some don’t seem to want to be repeated.

Q: You were quite involved in helping set up the ECAS show, which has been moving from space to space these past few years. How much of a challenge is it to work mounting such a nomadic show?

It is a big challenge realizing that every year will be a different thing. Obviously it’s going to be frustrating, but it is also a good thing in that you do have a different space with different strong and weak points. Of course there comes a time in every setup when you don’t think things will ever get done in time, but it does get done and that little bit of tension makes it all the more satisfying.