“Flower Portraits” Oil Painting Exhibition at FGY Art Gallery CHCH
To allow the public to visit her exhibition, on 21st July 2018 Fo Guang Yuan (FGY) Art Gallery Christchurch held an opening ceremony to launch the Sarah Deans “Flower Portraits” Oil Painting Exhibition. On this day, about 50 people comprising of friends of FGY and Sarah’s relatives attended the ceremony. The Guest of Honour for the occasion was FGY Art Gallery Christchurch Curator Venerable Abbess Manshin. In his opening speech, Sarah’s husband, Harry, remarked that during her younger days, Sarah had been a successful real estate agent. But later in her life, in order to pursue her artistic dream, Sarah plunged herself into oil painting. As a husband, Harry has given his encouragement and full support to Sarah in her pursuit of her artistic dream.
In her speech to the audience, Artist Sarah Deans thanked Venerable Abbess Manshin and members of BLIA South Island for their effort in making this exhibition possible. Sarah expressed her gratitude to the audience for their presence in this opening ceremony and hoped that they would like her art works on exhibition. She remarked that she has chosen ‘Flower Portraits’ as the theme of her exhibition because she loved to paint flowers because of their dazzling colours. Sarah has also discovered that each type of flower has got a character of its own. For this reason, instead of naming each painting after the botanical name of the flower, she tagged each painting with name reflective of the character of that flower. Sarah invited the audience, while appreciating the paintings, to also reflect on the appropriateness of the name chosen for each painting in relation to the character of the flower.
In response, Venerable abbess Manshin thanked Sarah for her many outstanding, lively and colourful paintings on exhibition at the FGY Art Gallery Christchurch. Venerable Abbess remarked that FGY Art Gallery Christchurch was set up by Fo Guang Shan (FGS) founder Master Hsing Yun to serve as a platform for the local New Zealand artists to share their beautiful works with the public, and in the process, help to promote harmony positively in the society. Venerable Abbess afterwards took the opportunity to encourage the audience to help spread the news of Sarah’s “Flower Portraits” Oil Painting Exhibition to the public via multi-media, so that more people will visit the Exhibition.
At this opening ceremony, the guests were also treated to a simple tea reception, and Sarah’s good friend, Margo, added colour to the occasion by rendering a beautiful Cappella, much to the delight of the audience. Sarah Deans “Flower Portraits” Oil Paintings Exhibition will be held for 3 months at the FGY Art Gallery Christchurch, and all are welcomed.