Snowshoeing at Cypress Mountain, Golya Mirderikvand.
S E A S O N S
Landscape paintings
Brian O'Connor
Golya Mirderikvand
Marisa Mary Myrah
January 8 to 24, 2026
Tuesday to Saturday
Noon to 5 pm.
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10.
2 to 4 pm.
Golya Mirderikvand
Artist Statement
The search for order within chaos is the main drive for my recent body of works. Noticing this duality through my various daily encounters in various settings and contexts, I also notice the delicate tension that exists in the space between chaos and order. It is this delicate intangible tension that I aim to depict and capture in my recent paintings.
Using my own photographic collection as references for my paintings, my selected works for this exhibition draw from natural landscapes or scenes that are visually rich, capturing a world of structured yet organic complexity. This particular body of works predominantly feature scenes where tree branches and their intricate networks come together to hold wild chaos encompassed within a harmonious overall composition.
Bio
Golya Mirderikvand is a contemporary painter based in Vancouver, BC. Her practice spans oil, acrylic, and watercolour painting, which she has explored for many years. She holds a Master’s degree in Art Conservation from Queen’s University, with a specialization in the conservation and restoration of paintings.
Beyond her painting and restoration work, Golya has been actively involved in various creative initiatives, fostering community engagement through art. She also has experience curating and coordinating exhibitions. Throughout her career, she has worked with renowned arts organizations, including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver), the Intermuseum Conservation Association (Cleveland, OH), and Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (Netherlands).
Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues across Metro Vancouver, and she is an Exhibiting member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.
Currently Golya works full time in the field of community and resource development, while keeping her painting practice going during evenings and weekends, with her studio located at 1000 Parker Street Studios.
Marisa Mary Myrha
Artist Statement
My perpetual exploration of nature has been a constant in my work. Considering myself a contemporary natural image painter, I strive to express a romantic feel for the history of painting through my keen observation of nature and elegiac imagery. Through new evaluations of landscape painting I am investigating the changing and threatened environment around us. Nature is carefully observed but not always directly depicted and it always retains a kind of visual instability, thriving on the permeable border between representation and abstraction.
Bio
Marisa Mary Myrah was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and studied Fine Arts at Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, graduating in 1990. She completed a Post-Baccalaureate in Painting at the Cyprus College of Art in Paphos, Cyprus in 1994. She has had a number of solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, most recently showing at The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver, The Seymour Art Gallery, North Vancouver, and the 1st Biennial Exhibition at The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co Mayo, Ireland. Marisa was an Artist-in-Residence at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, USA in 2000 and at the Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar, Spain in 2002. She currently resides in North Vancouver B.C. with her family.
Brian O'Connor
Artist Statement
My work is rooted in close observation of landscape and the quiet, sustaining presence of nature. Painting is my way of slowing down and paying attention—of engaging with place not as scenery, but as something lived within and returned to over time. I am particularly drawn to forests and liminal spaces, where light, rhythm, and growth unfold gradually and reward sustained looking.
Having grown up amid the rugged hills of Northern Ireland and later living in varied environments across Europe, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, I have developed a sensitivity to how place shapes perception and memory. Now based on the West Coast of Canada, I find continual inspiration in the temperate rainforest, where density, repetition, and subtle shifts in light create a rich visual language. My recent work explores these qualities through layered mark-making and suggestive colour, using hue and tone to evoke atmosphere, emotion, and sensory experience rather than literal description.
Painting, for me, is an act of attentiveness and care. It reflects a belief in art’s capacity to foster connection—to place, to time, and to one another—by inviting the viewer into moments of immersion and reflection. Through my work, I aim to create spaces that feel both grounded and open, acknowledging the vitality, complexity, and resilience of the natural world.
Bio
Raised in the hills of Northern Ireland in a large working-class family, Brian O’Connor was introduced to painting at an early age through the encouragement of his grandmother, who gifted him his first set of paints and recognised his artistic potential from the outset. Her belief in art as a meaningful and dignified vocation—shaped by her sister’s connection to the renowned painter Derek Hill—helped instil in Brian a lasting confidence in the value of creative work.
Deeply influenced by the natural landscapes of Ireland and later by places further afield, painting has remained a central and enduring focus throughout Brian’s life. He completed his foundational studies in art at the University of Ulster in Belfast before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from Falmouth University’s School of Art in Cornwall, England.
Alongside his studio practice, Brian has long been committed to art education and community engagement. Early in his career, he worked with the Belfast Central Mission, using art to bring together young people from across Northern Ireland’s political divide—an experience that reinforced his belief in art’s capacity to connect, heal, and inspire.
Brian has lived and worked in Northern Ireland, England, the Caribbean, and Thailand, and has been based in Vancouver for over eighteen years, where he teaches at St. George’s School. These varied environments and cultural experiences have played a formative role in shaping his artistic voice. A long-standing commission-based artist, he has exhibited in galleries in Belfast, England, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Canada. His current body of work is inspired by the quiet, immersive beauty of Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Park, reflecting an ongoing engagement with landscape, place, and attentive observation.