Tom Willock, Lower Bertha Falls, Waterton Lakes National Park, 1993, gelatin silver

Immersed in Waterton is a solo exhibition of works by photographer Tom Willock which features eighteen traditional silver gelatin black-and-white prints from two of his earlier series titled The Elements of Wilderness and Images of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park.

The photographs express the power of the vastness and beauty of this breathtaking mountain park which straddles the Canada-U.S. border in southern Alberta. The subjects depicted in the images range from frozen cascades to reed-filled ponds and from groupings of delicate maple leaves to forests dense with lodgepole pine.

Willock captures a sense of place with each photograph and explores our inherent connection to nature. The images are intimate and intuitive records that are infused with our sense of belonging.

“My sense of myself is inseparable from the land,” he writes in his biography at willockandsaxgallery.com. “My photographs have no purpose, no intention beyond the truthful expression of my own inner vision, reflections of human experience and the natural landscape. A quality of art is its simultaneous expression of particular and universal. For each of us, the expressive print will hold its own particular meaning and beauty.”

For more than forty years, Willock has been photographing the natural environment of southern Alberta in the large-format medium and developing film himself in a traditional darkroom to produce skilfully composed and technically impressive works. The director of the Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery from 1978 to 1998, he now lives in Banff, Alberta, where he runs the Willock and Sax Gallery with his wife, Susan Sax-Willock.

CULTURE DAYS RECEPTION AND ARTIST TALK

Sunday, September 29, 2013 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.

MEDICINE HAT PUBLIC LIBRARY Honor Currie Room, 414 First Street, Medicine Hat, AB

EXHIBITION RUNS September 3 – 30, 2013

FOR MORE INFORMATION www.trexprogramsoutheast.ca or 403-502-8586