Music or art? Fifty years ago, Gery Puley had to make a choice. She chose painting.

Artist, teacher, mentor and world traveller, Puley has made her mark on the local art world. Now her paintings, dating from the 1960s to the present, are showcased in Gery Puley: A Life in Art, a must-see exhibition at the Burlington Art Centre.

Puley, who was born in British Columbia, grew up playing in two orchestras. But when she moved to Ontario in 1946, she was unable to continue with her music. So art became her passion.

Puley took courses and became involved in the Hamilton and Burlington art community. She was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Burlington Art Centre.

Her repertoire is wonderfully varied and includes landscapes, florals, buildings and some human figures.

"I believe in art for art's sake," she says. "I believe in a vision from the heart."

Puley paints with oil, acrylic and watercolour, a medium that seems especially close to her heart. She finds watercolour well suited to her interest in light, colour and space.

In an early acrylic, Lorayne in Mirrored Reflections (1969), Puley depicts an intimate scene that is almost surreal in its composition. The foreground consists of the foot of a bed covered with a white coverlet. In the midground, a dresser with an ornate mirror takes over the centre of the composition. Reflected in the mirror, we see a clutter of objects and the head of a woman. This clutter sharply contrasts with the spacious empty wall around the mirror.

In Palace, St. Mark's Square, Venice (1998), Puley comes up close to two Venetian buildings in a bold visual statement. She paints only a part of the buildings, but each one looms large.

On the right, a palatial building with an arcade of pointed arches pushes into the foreground. The Church of San Marco, with its rounded arches, domes and pinnacles, takes over the midground on the left. Puley leaves room for a bit of blue sky, creating an airy space that contrasts with the solidity of the architecture.

Pale and rich colours play off one another. Areas of dark blue between the white columns of the foreground palace enable the columns to leap out. By contrast, the paler greens, pinks and blues of San Marco soften its white columns, making them appear infused with sunlight.

Puley is not out to depict exact architectural images but to capture a mood. So she is quite happy to reduce the ornament to a few squiggly lines and not linger too long on the brickwork.

Always ready for a challenge, Puley says she is "trying something new with each painting."

In Megavissey at the Harbour, Cornwall, U.K. (2002), a more recent watercolour, she explores the relationship between colour and line. Soft-edged areas of green, blue, mauve and white float in the picture space. Puley then adds black lines that hint at buildings and boats. Line and colour exist in harmony, the one never infringing on the other.

Puley will be talking about her work at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 4, at the BAC.

Regina Haggo, a former professor of art history at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.

dhaggo@thespec.com

Showtime

Who: Gery Puley

What: A Life in Art

Where: Burlington Art Centre, 1333 Lakeshore Rd.

When: till Nov. 13

Phone: 905-632-7796