NOVA Room

The NOVA room is used for hands on educational programs during the summer and fall. In the winter and spring, it is used to house exhibits by artists. Here's a recent exhibit that was on display during the winter.

In the badlands at night, the darkness stares back at you.

Stuart Adams

The NOVA Room was host to an art exhibit entitled Shadowlands.

He's been called one of the best visual storytellers around.

Jim Davies has earned this description from the signature landscape style and his ability to create an enigma or mystery within every painting.

Davies himself calls it an angst - a sense of being part of what's happening in the painting.

Call it what you will, we know you'll enjoy Shadowlands.

Artist's statement:

My preoccupation with the badlands has been to try and make sense of the difficult structural nature of the landscape. Moreover, I have been inspired by the epic grandeur - the panoramic qualities usually associated with the west and how all this great vastness of space is contextually reduced to a two dimensional format - canvas and paint.

The sense of light, the almost inaudible murmur of the heat, the unearthly formations, and the sharp crackling of dry brush underfoot - and especially a sense of what is under the earth that eternally links us to the past and to the future is challenge enough for any artist.

My work consists of field trips to both Drumheller and Dinosaur Provincial Park. I filter what I document through emotional channels (from pencil sketches and photographs). I rely on instinct and what I already know about drawing and painting to capture an expressive depiction of the badlands. I feel it would be an injustice to render photographically what is essentially very abstract.

Jim Davies

This document was prepared by Wayne Hortensius, Calgary, Alberta, Canada for the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society. All information © 1995 Royal Tyrrell Museum. All Rights Reserved.
Updated: July 20, 1995

Comments, questions, suggestions?