Tales from The County:

( Celebrating Rural life in Prescott & Russell)

In Tales from the County, artist Crystal Beshara shares the places, the stories and faces of the people who feed us, work the fields, build and restore our historic structures as well as the animals who graze and animate this lovely landscape.
You may even recognize a few characters both big and small! From antique tractors, dilapidated barns and heavy horses to tiny calves and pig -tailed 4H kids. From the boisterous and much celebrated Vankleek Hill Agricultural Fairto the quiet moments of woolly sheep soaking up the last few rays of golden light on an August day. In a series of delicate watercolours and robust oil paintings, Crystal unveils the extraordinary moments of each and every day that we sometimes take for granted.

ARTIST STATEMENT: “My upbringing greatly influenced my lens on the world. I use my artwork as an outlet for contemplative exploration of deeper concepts reflecting on how I and we, as humans, relate to an ever-changing landscape and environment.  Painting rural subject matter for me is both a cathartic and documentative means to record a way of life that is slowly disappearing. It serves as a history of the homesteads, the people, animals and agriculture of this land.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Crystal Beshara is an international, multi-award winning contemporary realist painter living in Eastern Ontario. She has been drawing and painting since childhood inspired by her rural upbringing in Fournier Ontario. Crystal moves easily between watercolour, oil and dry media.  She spent years as a child observing and quietly illustrating life on the farm which informed the anatomy in both her flora and fauna subject matter, her ability to capture expression and emotion and her affinity for barns and farming equipment.

She has exhibited alongside some of North America’s best Wildlife artists including John Seerey-Lester, Kim Diment, James Gurney, Mort Solberg and Canadian icon Robert Bateman. She holds a BFA in Studio and a Botanical Illustration diploma from the Society of Botanical Artists  (UK). She has been featured in American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur and International Artist Magazine , CBC television and radio, TVO, CTV television and more.

Crystal is also a regularly invited Juror & Arts Educator and offers painting workshops abroad (Santa Fe, Greece, Wyoming, Newfoundland, France, England and Mexico) as well as her home studio in L’Orignal Ontario.