Artist Nancy Wardle puts the people behind Niagara’s harvest on canvas in a new portrait exhibition at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, arguing that residents admire the region’s farms while often overlooking the workers who sustain it all.
FACE IT! Portraits of the Harvest, which opened Aug. 9 in the Joyner Gallery, presents growers, vineyard workers, winemakers and craftspeople from farms and wineries across the region.
Wardle said the series grew from a gap she noticed in how residents see in the place they call home.
“We admire the farms and the orchards and the vineyards. But we don’t always stop to think about the people whose hands make all that possible. And I wanted to make those people visible,” she said.
The Niagara-on-the-Lake artist spent six months on the series, working daily in a studio her husband, Greg, built in their back garden. The show is her second FACE IT! exhibition at the Pumphouse, following a 2023 series that portrayed 60 people.
Several of her subjects attended the opening reception, including Dorothy Soo-Wiens and Coun. Erwin Wiens, grape growers with Erwin Wiens Vineyards Ltd., Wayne Blake, a vineyard worker at Stratus Vineyards, and other farmworkers whose portraits hang in the show.
Wardle painted many subjects from reference photographs and has never met some of them.
Author Jill Troyer introduced her to growers and workers across the region, and Troyer’s husband, photographer Don Reynolds, supplied many of the photos.
A photograph gives her information, Wardle said, and her job is to interpret it. She zooms in, changes compositions and colours, removes signs and builds many layers of oil or acrylic paint.
“Every brush stroke is an attempt to capture character rather than simply copy a photo,” she said.
Her subjects come from different farms, vineyards and wineries, but Wardle said they share a quiet strength, resilience and pride. Many begin their days before sunrise and work through winter pruning, harvest heat, floods and frost.
“These portraits are my small way of saying that your work matters, your resilience matters, and your story should be seen,” she said.
She wants viewers to leave the gallery connecting familiar Niagara products with the labour behind them.
“Every bottle of wine, beer, cider, basket of peaches, a bunch of grapes and a tray of vegetables begins with someone whose work often goes unnoticed,” said Wardle.
On Sept. 1, she will begin an artist residency on Fogo Island, N.L., where she plans a new series of at least 15 portraits of island residents.
FACE IT! Portraits of the Harvest remains on view in the Joyner Gallery until Aug. 29.
