For 36 years, Paint-In has drawn thousands of people to connect with artists in an event unlike any other.
By David Lennam
Timothy Wilson Hoey doesn’t usually decide how he’s going to present at the Paint-In until he’s almost ready to set up somewhere along the 10 blocks of Moss Street where as many as 50,000 people will be ambling by, perusing works by 165 local artists.
“Every year I try to do something different. I don’t try to make it a day of selling stuff,” says the artist recognized for his Hudson’s Bay/Canadiana-themed paintings framed by hockey sticks. “I make it a day of painting and participating. Once you put it in that context, it’s a really fun day.”
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s signature event, in its 36th year this July 19, is the gallery’s biggest day and its chief fundraiser, with a beer garden, activities for the kids, even something for all those dogs who wander the two kilometres of leafy boulevards sniffing out fresh canvases (or treats).
Nancy Noble had never experienced a paint-in until she arrived as the gallery’s CEO and director three years ago from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. But she immediately recognized something special was happening.
“It was astonishing to me … I had no idea what to expect,” she says. “I could not believe that an organization this size put on an event that big and how great it was for the community and how the community loved it.”
The Paint-In is a calling card for the AGGV to break down the sort of barriers that often keep people away from art galleries. “They can be seen as elitist,” says Noble. “This is a way for us to give back to artists, to promote local and regional artists in a way we can’t always do in the walls of our gallery.”
Simply, she says, this opens up people’s exposure to art. Last year nearly 14,000 of the Paint-In attendees took advantage of free admission to the gallery.
In 1987, the inaugural year saw a handful of artists working and showing in the gallery’s parking lot. Within a decade, 20,000 people showed up to see 90 artists.
“This is a way for us to give back to artists, to promote local and regional artists in a way we can’t always do in the walls of our gallery.”
“I don’t know of another Canadian gallery that does it to this scale in one day,” says Noble. “It’s an immense amount of work, but so much pleasure.”
While the majority of artists on display are fairly straightforward in how they display their work, Hoey, who’s been a fixture at 15 Paint-Ins, has tried to make his a sideshow.
“[The singer] Carolyn Mark told me once when people come to a rock show they really just want a show, it’s not about the music,” he says. “When I did the Paint-In those first few years it was like, ‘This is what I do, these are my paintings.’ Then I thought, ‘What can I do to make things fun?’ ”
One year he made it a circus theme with a tent full of oddities. Other years he’s brought his old motorcycle down and hosted curb-side singalongs. This year he’s sharing a booth with his partner and recent painting collaborator, Zandra Xōchitl, adding, “What we end up doing at the event, that can change at the last minute.”
Hoey refers to Paint-In as a bit of a weird venue — out in public, laying everything bare.
“In your own studio you can fake it. But Paint-In is live. You’re there working in real time and people decide whether it’s good or not. But by the end of the day I have no voice. You spend the whole day talking and there’s just a nice buzz about it … a real community feel which, in so many ways, we don’t have anymore.”
