ARTIST BIOS

Vincent Luykenaar

Vincent was born in Holland in 1947. He graduated from high school in The Hague and then studied medicine at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

After graduating in 1972 he spent eight years in the Royal Dutch Navy as a medical officer.

In 1982 Vincent, Mirjam, Kevin and Richard emigrated to Canada, and Vincent became a flight surgeon in the Royal Canadian Airforce, while stationed at Cold Lake.

In 1985 the family moved to Coaldale, Alberta, where Vincent worked as a family doctor until his retirement in 2019.

Vincent has been interested in drawing and painting since childhood. His paintings are in private collections globally. In 1987 he befriended Alberta sculptor Cornelius Martens, who introduced him into sculpting and bronze casting. Vincent and Mirjam built their own foundry in their backyard and were very busy with the bronze casting process for many years.

Vincent paints in watercolor, oils and acrylics.

Vincent and Mirjam are proud owners of the “Desert Spring Bronze Art Gallery,” which is located at their home in Coaldale.

Judith Nickol

Alberta artist Judith Nickol has been painting since she was a child. Working from a studio on the family farm beside the Old Man river, she seeks to capture in watercolor the awe-inspiring beauty of the prairies, mountains, and dramatic, expansive skies of southern Alberta. Each painting is a response to a moment in time.

Judith began private art instruction at age nine, and graduated from the University of Montana with a BA in art.

Richard Luykenaar, BFA

Sculpture is a creative outlet for the expression of ideas. I create narratives in space through gesture; the work may offer social commentary, or it may simply elucidate the beauty of the body and organic forms. My work is provocative but finds its source

in humor. Realism allows the viewer ample opportunity to identify and interpret form.

I cast in bronze for its traditional posterity and inherent beauty. The completed bronze is born of clay; a material which I find conducive to fluidity and a natural, organic movement. The clay allows me to draw in space. A piece begins as a vague concept the sculpture progresses in an ostensibly natural direction. I know the work is finished when continuing to ply the clay will impart no further significance to the finished product.

The major body of my work is a marriage between sociological/psychological observation, and fantasy. Some work focuses on the athletic human body, and still more on animal forms. The animal forms speak to my environment in southern Alberta but convey a quirky humor which dissociates them from traditional ‘Western’ sculpture.

I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Lethbridge in 1998. I have subsequently exhibited work at Desert Spring Bronze Art Gallery in Coaldale Alberta and at Gallerij Utrecht, in Utrecht Holland. My work is featured in several private collections.

Joseph Anderson, MFA 

Joseph was born in Edmonton, raised in southern Alberta, and is currently living and working in Saskatoon.