Opening Reception: Thursday, February 6, 6–8 p.m.
Meet the Artists: Saturday, February 8, 2–3 p.m.

The Ferry Building Gallery is proud to present Naturescopic, an exhibition featuring Marianne Hansen, Ralph Sears, and Stephanie Taylor. Through their artworks, the artists explore the beauty and fragility of the natural world, encouraging viewers to pause, reflect, and truly observe.

Ralph Sears looks for the unexamined and forgotten beauty found in the changing seasons. He records these overlooked moments in nature with his camera and then spends two to three hundred hours replicating the image in painting. This labour of love aims to captivate views and slow them down into appreciating the complexity and glory of the natural world around us.

Like Sears, Stephanie Taylor draws inspiration from natural places that she has visited. When moving through landscapes, Taylor gathers not just visual cues like colour and light but also sensations: the smell of damp rocks, the hum of insects, sunlight filtering through leaves. These impressions shape her paintings, blending layers and experimentation to evoke emotions both personal and universal. Working in large-scale means that Taylor can transform spaces and take the viewer back to a moment of meditation in nature.

Marianne Hansen’s Birds of Prey series highlights the often-tense coexistence between raptors and humans. Her fiber sculptures celebrate these majestic creatures, blending realism with artistic interpretation. Slightly scaled down, the birds’ delicate forms and commanding presence are accentuated, inviting viewers to reflect on their beauty and fragility.

Artist Bios

Marianne Hansen draws inspiration from the raw beauty of the landscapes she has called home, reflecting a deep connection to nature in her art. In her studio, surrounded by found natural objects, vibrant colours, and rich textures, she combines her Scandinavian heritage and traditional hand skills to create fibre sculptures and mixed-media works. Using needle and wet felting on handcrafted wire armatures, Hansen blends wool, silk, and other natural fibers to achieve intricate, life-like details.

Ralph Sears is a hyper-realist painter passionate about capturing the beauty of nature. His detailed works celebrate Indigenous flora and fauna. With a foundation in pencil portraits and abstract art, Ralph honed his skills through courses, mentorship, and self-study. A 36-year career in environmental health deepened Sears’ commitment to preserving nature, inspiring works that explore the dynamic beauty of each season.

Stephanie Taylor studied Fine Arts at the University of Victoria and has been painting since 2018. She creates large-scale oil paintings portraying the mountains, ocean, and forests of British Columbia and Canada. Taylor's work moves between abstraction and impressionism, incorporating elements of representational detail to convey the fleeting emotive experience in nature while anchoring the viewer in a specific environment. She is represented by Mountain Galleries (Whistler/Banff/Jasper), The Avenue Gallery (Victoria), Effusion Gallery (Invermere), and Wallspace Gallery (Ottawa).