Spring Art Tour celebrates 10 years

MUSKOKA LAKES - Experienced through our senses, art is food for the soul. There is nothing like seeing, touching and connecting with the artist’s creative process in the studio or studio-based gallery.
A designated Arts Community, Muskoka is home to many recognized professional artists. This weekend, June 9 and 10, 11 studios and galleries in the west part of Muskoka will be open for the 10th annual Muskoka Lakes Spring Art Tour.
The tour has expanded again this year with four new artists: Muskoka’s renowned bird and wildlife carver John de Lang, painters Donna McLaren and Andrea Ross, as well as fused glass artist Joan Sellens. With 22 artists on the tour and 11 locations, the variety and depth of creative work is impressive.
The tour is a chance to meet highly accomplished, award-winning artists and to see their work up close and in a personal setting.
The artists’ studios and exhibitions on this year’s tour span from Bracebridge, Windermere, Port Carling and Bala. Jon and Suzann Partridge, and Wendy Moses Alexandra Luke Gallery are both veterans of studio tours, located just west of Bracebridge. They are joined this year by Elke Scholz at her new location on Ziska Road, who is also hosting basket weaver Ise Soja.
Connie Beninger, who paints on slate, basswood and canvas, and James Tough Barrelesque, who handcrafts trays and cabinets, are both showing with metal sculptor Deborah Harkness in Beaumaris.
Sculptor and painter Haysam Haytoaglu is located in Port Carling, while Gayle Dempsey’s Muskoka Place Gallery, just southwest of Port Carling, will be showing not only Dempsey’s work, but also two new members: Andrea Ross and Joan Sellens.
Well-known oil painter Jane Gordon will be with Iris Gammon at her Studio in the Glen in Glen Orchard.
Landscape painter Donna McLaren will be displaying her mixed media — oils, acrylic, pastel and watercolour — at the newly opened H2O Gallery at Mortimer’s Marine.
Heading towards Bala, Glenda Davies, a watercolour artist, welcomes Gillian Woan and her fabric wall hangings, Penny Varney Jewellery, and Henrike Clement’s quill, birchbark, beads and deerhide creations in her studio off the Moon River Road.
Photographer Jon Gurr will be showing images from Muskoka and around the world in his Bala gallery.
Rounding out the tour is the gallery of Christine Marshall, off District Road 38. Bird and waterfowl carver John de Lang will be showing with Marshall at her studio.
Please feel free to contact any of the artists directly to learn more about their studios and what special pieces will be on display for the show. For more information about the tour itself, including links to artists’ websites, please visit muskokalakesspringarttour.com.
The tour is supported by generous local businesses: Windermere House, Sherwood Inn, Clevelands House, Bala Bay Inn, State Farm Insurance, Budget Propane and Oil, Touchstone on Lake Muskoka, Flavours of Muskoka, FCA Insurance Brokers, McLaren Press Graphics, Media Solutions Group and the Muskoka Lakes Chamber of Commerce. The tour is also grateful for the support of so many other Muskoka businesses.
Muskoka is a thriving arts destination with internationally recognized artists whose creativity and innovation continue to reward and inspire. The studios, many located in scenic and imaginative settings, are well worth investigating on this self guided tour.

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