Another James North gallery is closing - the third in six months.

In October, Oswalds, north of Barton, shut its doors. Then the Art Gallery of Hamilton shuttered the AGH Annex at the end of February. Now Focus Gallery, the best-looking private gallery on the street, is saying its farewells. April 14 will be its last day.

Focus opened about seven years ago after extensive renovations to the building by new owners Mark Strutt, his brother Howard Strutt and Cornelia Wilhelm, who is married to Mark.

"Some aspects of our efforts we're most proud of was offering artists from every level of skill and career development a chance to experience some recognition," Mark Strutt tells me. "From kids just out of university, or bringing in young aspiring artists we found leaning their work against the James Street Armoury wall. People who would otherwise never have had that experience."

Some of the gallery's artists are on show now with a variety of subjects and styles.

Ancaster artist Brian Darcy, who has been making art for more than 40 years, paints people, birds, animals and landscape in a soft-edged lifelike style. His landscapes are often bathed in the light of early morning or late evening.

In "Morning Dew," Darcy captures the shimmery light of morning. A tiny red-winged blackbird adds a sense of movement to the serene landscape.

Stronger colours characterize the land in Howard Day's "Fall in the Valley." Day's style is expressive in that he uses shapes and colours to add drama.

Trees in the foreground impede our entry into the painting. Day reduces them to vertical shapes that lean precariously to the right and grow beyond the pictorial space at the top. Sharp, yet undulating, rows of orange, yellow and green energize the background.

Day has been painting since 2002 and has exhibited in Toronto and Montreal.

Prior to starting the Focus Gallery, Mark Strutt built a career as an artist. One of his mentors was Robert Bateman, whose work has appeared on the walls of the gallery.

"Hamilton," Strutt says, "is an artist's dream." He finds a wealth of both landscapes and gritty urban vignettes.

One day while driving and "looking for something to paint," he came across a beige corduroy sofa sitting beside the road. That was the beginning of "Couch Art on Kenilworth."

Couches belong indoors, but this one sits provocatively outdoors. It appears to have settled into the strip of grass near the curb since chicory plants have had time to grow around it. Some of the cushions are out of place; there's no one to tidy them up.

Strutt gravitates to the forlorn and abandoned.

"I like those oddball things we walk by," he explains.

The couch dominates the composition, drawing attention to itself. In taking such an ordinary object and making it the subject of a painting, Strutt records and immortalizes the mundane.

Strutt, 64, says running a gallery was almost a 24-hour-a-day job that left him with no time for his own art. He hopes to get back to painting soon.

"We helped many artists move up, by introducing them to dealers in the upscaled Toronto scene," Strutt says. "So we come away from the project with feelings of great accomplishment."

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.

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dhaggo@the spec.com

Gallery artists group show

Where: The Focus Gallery, 66 James St. N.

When: until April 14

Phone: 905-218-9557

