East Coast artists Katharine Burns and Jared Betts on riding waves and making their mark on Pouch Cove, NL

 

Jared Betts sometimes stares at his blank canvas for hours before he can make his first mark. It might take him a little more time before he touches his canvas again but when he does, it’s game on. The Moncton, New Brunswick artist moves his brushes with broad sweeps, and with what looks like spontaneous splashes and drips of paint, but each move he makes is intentional. It’s highly gestural painting, embodying action and energy. He rides a roller coaster of colour and emotion. When I ask Jared how he feels after he completes a painting, he laughs and says that he often feels confused.

That’s the reaction that some people gave Betts and his friend and fellow artist Katharine Burns—another young East Coast artist sought after by collectors for her highly rendered waves and sparkling ocean surfaces—when they learned that they were going to collaborate on a painting. How could the styles of abstract expressionism and representational painting live on the same canvas?

Burns herself had some concerns but she was also excited by the experiment.

Working with jolts of neon and open fields of colours that typified the audacious style of painting that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, Betts would seem an unlikely choice for the seascape painter to collaborate with. But a year ago, the perfect opportunity to work together presented itself. She invited the NB artist to join her for an eight-week artist in residency program at the James Baird Gallery in Pouch Cove, NL. It would be Burns’ third trip to the residency, an artist’s haven that hangs on the northeastern edge of the Avalon Penisula outside St. John’s. For the last seven years, she had been represented by the gallery owner and had worked on several collections during her time in the small port community. Burns and gallerist James Baird had invited a group of seascape painters from other parts of the world to gather in Pouch Cove. Baird says there was immediate response to the invitation. Artists around the world were aware of the tiny gallery with the huge reputation for being one of the most unique residency programs. But pandemic restrictions were making it difficult for travel. Burns and Baird had to push pause on the international invitation, but the delay created the occasion for the two artists—who once studied together at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax—to dive into a long talked-about collaboration.

 

On the edge of the continent

Burns and Betts arrived in Pouch Cove in March of 2021 when Newfoundland was still requiring a 14-day quarantine for any travellers to the island. Although the community is only 30 minutes from the city of St. John’s, Burns says that you really do feel like you are on the edge of the earth. “I was happy to have Jared with me,” says Burns. “You typically feel isolated when you are working here. There is serenity to this place. It’s very special but with the quarantining that we had to do, being locked up in this building all on your own would have been a little freaky.”

Betts and Burns celebrate Ophelia at the end of their residency at the James Baird Gallery.

Instead of wandering the nearby trails and through the town, the artists roamed the gallery spaces that are housed on the levels below the artist studios.

“It was such a unique experience to be quarantining in this building filled with so much art. I think there are eight gallery spaces and over 1,000 works of art. The loft spaces that we are in are self-contained apartments and studio space. You just can’t get this anywhere else. If these spaces were in New York, they would be worth millions of dollars,” says Betts.

The James Baird Gallery was originally the community school. Baird ended up with the building after what he says was a restaurant deal gone bad. He already had a gallery space in the city, but he had another vision for the old schoolhouse—a place where he could welcome artists from around the world. Most residency programs charge their artists, but Baird’s model is different. It’s invitation-only and free but he asks that all artists donate based on what they feel their time in Pouch Cove was worth. It’s a deal that has worked well and has been part of the critical success of the Pouch Cove Foundation, the entity that funds that residency program in the gallery.

Returning to Pouch Cove was almost like returning to a home away from home for Burns. She has developed a close relationship with Baird, one of two gallerists that represent her work. The other is the Abbozzo Gallery in Toronto. In fact, it was Baird who encouraged the young painter to give up her day job and paint fulltime.

 

More than a wave

“I think Katharine had a bit of imposter syndrome,” says Baird, who doesn’t declare himself an art expert but has an obvious eye for talent that he has schooled over the years. “When Katharine does get to the welcome the group of seascapes artists that she admires she is going to see that she is just as good…I think she just might become one of the best,” say Baird.

Burns only paints what she feels a connection to. When she takes a commission, she only works from her own collection of photos that she takes when she is exploring the coastline or when she takes to the water in her kayak.

“I have always been moved by the ocean,” she says. “I find it both healing and meditative and I try to recreate that feeling on the canvas. My work is representational, but I am trying to do more that recreate a wave. The ocean is so vast and powerful but when I focus very tightly on that wave or move in close and capture the way the sun hits the surface of the water that changes things, it’s as if water goes on forever,” she explains.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Katharine Burns has become an overnight sensation. She has put in the work. Her skills and critical eye are thought to be improving with every painting. In the last few years, she has become one of the more sought-after painters on the east coast for her genre. There are many people who want a “Katharine Burns.” She is having a hard time keeping up with the demand.

Last spring in Pouch Cove, Burns had a to-do list.

“She was definitely on a mission,” says Betts, recalling their first days in the studios. “I think I was taking my time, but she went right to work, and I thought I had better get busy.”

 

Have art, will travel

Burns had five commissions to complete in addition to the collaborate piece. Betts had his own projects lined up, eight paintings—two that he sold as soon as he made an Instagram post showing his progress. By the time the residency wrapped up he had sold four paintings and the others went to Studio 21 in Halifax, owned by Deborah Carver, one of several gallerists that have been supporting his work.

Betts explains that while Pouch Cove was special, he was no stranger to residency programs and has travelled to world with a mobile studio mindset– have art, will travel. His residencies have taken him to Iceland, Ireland and to the jungles of Costa Rica. The Newfoundland studios were inspired places for Betts to work, but it was the opportunity to collaborate with Burns that spurred his excitement. As an abstract expressionist painter, his style and process couldn’t be any more different from Burn’s representational work; but he is also influenced by the ocean, its movement and endless transformation. He saw a connection to the realism of his friend’s wave paintings.

“The ocean is something that we can all understand and know, but also so abstract,” says Betts.

Betts’ style surfaced when he was a student at NSCAD. In his first few years he says that he was drawing with paint, but with encouragement to add layers and discovering different tools and ideas about abstract mark making, he gradually shifted from his figurative work, blazing his own trail like the expressions of star nebulas that sometimes find their way into his subject matter.

“In my mind I had completely planned out the collaboration,” says Betts, who has long admired his friend’s work and is quick to throw accolades her way.

“I had a concrete idea in my mind. My abstract work would be the sky and her wave would be the bottom half,”

But when Betts was working on his underpainting, it became evident to both artists that there was something else happening. Burns’ wave crested in the middle of the canvas, leaving the bottom third undisturbed and the illusion of being under the surface of water.

 

A dip in icy water

With his contribution done and the wave starting to take shape, Betts felt the urge to physically connect with their source of inspiration and took a plunge into the stream behind the gallery, rushing from the melt of winter. He completely submerged himself, stretching out on the stream bed—a baptism of sorts, and maybe a sub-conscious naming ceremony for the painting yet to be born.

“I’ve always loved the Shakespearean character Ophelia, unaware of the harsh reality of life. The merging of the beautiful wave crashing and melding into my painting seemed to bring up the Ophelia vibe in my mind. Katharine and I seemed to agree on that,” elaborates Betts.

Before she was even finished, Ophelia had a home. There were several parties interested the piece, which both artists say turned out even better than they could have imagined. By coincidence, the painting took up residency in Moncton, purchased by doctors Sheamus and Samantha Kearns, who have connections to Newfoundland The couple already had collected two of Betts’ smaller pieces that were purchased as mementos of when the couple were first dating.

A year later, Burns looks back at the time in Pouch Cove as a very special experience. It was time for her to expand on her own body of work, but she was also able to tighten her focus and immerse herself in a better understating of her residency companion.

“Jared’s work is an extension of him. It’s unique, and expressive,” she says. “What he is creating is really deep. Abstract art is complicated in the general population. My work is very easy to understand. Spending time with Jared, getting to know him better, seeing how he works and the time he puts into it is impressive.

“Jared is working on his paintings even when he is not working on his paintings. I have a whole new appreciation for his work,” she says.

When asked if another collaboration could be in the works, Bett’s responds. “I would love to, if I can get the attention of the rock star over there.”