Rainforest Arts is a shop and gallery you’ll want to visit when you’re in Chemainus, filling out your Christmas wish-list. Not only will you find a great selection of paintings, jewellery, sculpture, fabric art, pottery and cards, you’ll also find an affordable range of prices and styles. There’s something for everyone at Rainforest Arts. Art…

Barry Strasbourg-Thompson can trace the lines of his artistic heritage back a long way. Seated in his new studio and gallery space in the Chemainus Community Market, he cites a lineage that goes back three generations and more. “My grandmother had her arts certificate at fifteen, her teaching certificate at sixteen,” he said. “But in…

Terroir (pronounced tear•war for non-connoisseurs in the crowd) isn’t a nuance normally associated with the visual arts; it’s that often pricy bouquet of specific vintages of wine, infused into the grapes by the earth they were grown in. But for Christi York, whose Wildworks show will be featured at Rainforest Arts August and September, her…

For Wayne and Kathy Enslow the bits and pieces have been coming together over the last four years, as they’ve mastered the techniques and mindset of metal art sculpture in the eclectic clutter of their Cowichan Valley studio. Their passion for welding together nuts, bolts, bushings, spoons, forks – just about any pieces of metal…

Artists are so intensely focused on their works, that they are usually unaware of how the art of becoming an artist is part of the process – that painting, writing, dancing, and in Peggy Grigor’s case, working with clay, are transformative acts. About a year ago, though, a shift from shaping clay mostly on a…

The title of Craig Golby’s show, Above & Below, can be interpreted in several intriguing ways. As a nature photographer, he points his lens sky and landward, capturing eagles in flight, bears pawing along shorelines, and stunning vistas from bird’s eye views. As a diver, he takes you beneath the waves, into the magnificent habitats…

Pinned to a cork board on the wall of Linda Yurgensen’s studio is a photo of her and her father painting together during a recent trip she took back to her home province, Nova Scotia. It’s a reminder of her very first inclination to translate reality into a representative vision through art. Retired now, Allen…

Shop at the Rainforest Arts in Chemainus this Christmas, and with each purchase you can enter your name in a Dec. 24 draw for two Christmas gift baskets, brimming with a total of $1,500 worth of donated art. See feature coverage of Rainforest’s Christmas selection of unique works, by local artists.

What is it you look for in a Christmas present? Of course, you want something unique, something that will delight and surprise, and in that department, few presents top original art. So, with more than fifty artists displaying paintings, sculpture, jewelry, pottery and more at Rainforest Arts, it’s a great place to find gifts that…