Garry Kaye is a Canadian painter whose work transforms overlooked rural spaces into meticulously rendered, quietly powerful acrylic paintings. Born and raised on Salt Spring Island, he is a third-generation islander whose childhood was shaped by farms, forest trails, and a then much less populated landscape. Those formative years cultivated a different sense of beauty—one grounded not in grand vistas, but in tangled underbrush, weathered fences, and the subtle drama of light across ordinary ground.
Kaye studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University), completing a four-year diploma in 1965 with a focus on sculpture, alongside drawing and painting. After returning to Salt Spring in 1970, he gradually shifted his attention toward painting, repeatedly revisiting the island landscape as his primary subject. His stated goal is simple and disarming: “What I want to do is capture the respect I have for these surroundings, in a series of paintings of the landscape.”
Kaye’s process is both intensely contemporary and deeply methodical. He begins with digital photographs taken on his walks and drives around the island. Using Photoshop, he manipulates, blurs, and zooms into these images until halos of unexpected colour—“auras”—appear around leaves, branches, and grasses. These magnified reference grids reveal chromatic information we can’t easily see with the naked eye.
In the studio, he transfers these findings onto canvas using a handmade grid tool, completing the painting one small square at a time. Background colour fields are established first; details are then developed slowly, inch by inch. A single six-inch section can take days. From a distance, the finished work reads as photographic. Up close, it collapses into abstract mark-making and layered colour, revealing the artist’s hand everywhere.
Kaye’s paintings often depict what many people overlook: roadside tangles, hedges, overgrown fencelines, and dense pockets of foliage. In his work, these “non-spots” become complex, shimmering worlds—composed of warm and cool greens, unexpected violets, deep shadows, and sharp flickers of light.
His work has been widely exhibited and is held in national and international private and public collections. He has received significant recognition, including:
- First Prize — Parallel Art Show (SSNAP) Viewers’ Choice Award, 2023/24, for Overgrown Fenceline
- Second Prize — Parallel Art Show Viewers’ Choice Award, 2020/21, for Pond Reflections
- First Prize — People’s Choice Award and Outstanding Salt Spring Entry, 2017 Salt Spring National Art Prize, for Roadside
Kaye’s paintings have been featured in Acrylic Artist (Summer 2014, ten-page article), ArtLA Magazine (May 2015), and Aqua Magazine (with Bly Kaye). His work is represented by Steffich Fine Art on Salt Spring Island.
