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Southern Ontario Visual Artists return to Shelburne Art Gallery for ‘As the Artists View It II’

October 9, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Paula Brown, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Artwork created by several southern Ontario professional artists, some of whom live in Dufferin County, will once again be on display in the Town of Shelburne.

The Southern Ontario Visual Artists (SOVA) group, with members from Mono and Orangeville, has returned to the community to host an exhibit titled “As the Artists View It II,” at the Shelburne Town Hall Art Gallery from Oct. 6 until Oct. 24.

“I don’t know how to best describe it, but we do like it up there. We enjoy the setting, it’s nice and small, and the people that are there are great,” said Lynden Cowan, founder of SOVA, about returning to the Shelburne Town Hall Art Gallery. “We [SOVA] go to different settings and we have a lot of artists from up in this area,”

The exhibit features over 40 pieces of art from eight SOVA members: Robert Chisholm, Lynden Cowan, Helen Duplassie, Margaret Pardy, Lynne Schumacher, Steve Wilson, Michelle Eissler, and E. Connie Munson.

The artists showcased in the exhibit work in a variety of different mediums to depict their unique perspectives, including pastel, acrylic, oil, ink, and photography.

“Art is really an emotion, and looking at art stirs emotions in people. When you see different ways of presenting the subject, it brings something out in everyone,” said Cowan. “In this show, there’s something for everyone to enjoy; it’s not limited. It’s different, but it all seems to click together.”

“As the Artists View It II” is a sequel to SOVA’s first exhibit at the Shelburne Town Hall Art Gallery from Aug. 6 to 23, 2024, titled “As the Artists View It.”

The Southern Ontario Visual Artists is an exhibition group of artists that originally formed in June of 2014 and hosted their first art showcase the following September.

From the first year as a group, SOVA has been active in the art community, assisting in an anti-bullying campaign at The Arts Project in London, Ont., helping to paint sculpted horses for the Pan Am games that were showcased throughout the Headwaters area, and hosting an exhibition of their work in the Fall’s Gallery of the Alton Mills Arts Centre.

Each year, the group looks to be involved in up to five exhibits displaying the work of its members.

Those interested in finding out more information about the artists who are a part of the exhibit and their pieces of work can visit the Town Hall Art Gallery page on the Town of Shelburne website – www.shelburne.ca.

More information about the Southern Ontario Visual Artists group can be found at www.southernontariovisualartists.com.

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