Yorkregion.com - Thornhill - Scratchboard artist highlights annual Thornhill artists’ tour
Scratchboard artist highlights annual Thornhill artists’ tour
Maxine Tyndall is one of 11 artists participating in the Thornhill Artist Studio Tour and Sale during Mother’s Day weekend. She creates her art using a style called Stratchboarding.
Thornhill
May 03, 2008 08:26 PM
By: Dwayne Wynter
Using sharp knives alone as her tools, she scratches the likeness of faces and figures depicting the young and old, revealed below a black blank surface.
For more than 20 years, Maxine Tyndall has been using the technique of scratchboard to create her artwork.
Different than some traditional or maybe better-known artistic mediums scratchboard is revealing an image below the surface, where the artist scratches with a knifing tool to uncover another shade.
The harder you push, the more that’s taken away to expose the white beneath.
“It’s like a carving feeling. There’s two ways to do it. You can either buy it in a store prepared or prepare it yourself,” Ms Tyndall said.
“You can use other colour boards but you miss out on the contrast when using something other than black.”
Inspired by figures and forms of people, Ms Tyndall believes it reflects in her much of her work.
“The way society portrays the body bothers me,” she said.
“I want people to see that beauty is for everyone and we’re all as good as the next person.”
You can discover Ms Tyndall’s art as one of the 11 artists featured on the 12th annual Thornhill Visual Artists Spring Studio Tour and Sale next weekend.
From May 9 to 11, the free tour lets you a admire artists and their work and purchase something they like.
You can visit any of the 11 studios, one for each artist, interact with other art lovers, meet the artists and celebrate mom’s big day, too.
“A lot of people wonder what they should do on Mother’s Day,” publicity chairperson and participating artist Ronit Kushnir said.
“This is a family event and we did this (on this weekend) so people had somewhere to go and enjoy themselves.”
And in celebration of the Mother’s Day weekend, and unlike years past, three salons have teamed up with the studio tour to offer a contest for nine different spa packages to pamper women.
“This year we wanted to give people even more incentive to come out, but at the same time we wanted to create awareness and educate people on the culture of artwork and artists that live in their community,” Ms Kushnir said.
With a variety of art on display, she said there will be something for everyone’s artistic tastes.
“From pottery to jeweler or abstract art or something more real,” she said.
“It’s a great environment and we aren’t trying to push anyone to buy anything.”
For more on the tour, check out www.thornhillartisttour.com or call 905-764-3783.