FRONT ROW
Marie Nagel's 2012 Wild Coast, acrylic on canvas, 30"x36," is one of her landscape paintings on show at Eclectic Gallery this month.
October by robert moyes
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THE LURE OF THICK PAINT Blessed with a lifelong interest in painting, Marie Nagel attended Calgary’s Alberta College of Art in the early 1960s. By 1990 she moved to Wells, BC and bought an old abandoned Anglican church, where she set up her own gallery. “I was showing the work of other local artists as well as my own and eventually there were seven galleries there,” says Nagel. After moving to Victoria nearly five years ago, she promptly joined the Al Frescoes, a group of artists who do “plein air” outdoor painting every Friday. “I’ve always been interested in landscape, but I use it as a subject to hang my painting on,” explains the soft-spoken Nagel. “I like thick paint ... and just the act of painting itself,” she adds. “It’s the most important thing in the world to me.” Nagel is a big fan of local artist James Gordaneer, and also takes inspiration from such diverse masters