Opening Reception: Thursday, January 8, 6–8 p.m.
Meet the Artists: Saturday, January 17, 2–3 p.m.
Tour for Mandarin Speakers: Saturday, January 17, 2 p.m.

The Ferry Building Gallery is proud to present Strange Land, featuring paintings by Emma Fish, Jean Bradbury, and Gregg Simpson that use the natural world as a mirror for human experience.

In her vibrant mountain landscapes, Emma Fish explores the emotional connection between people and place. Influenced by her life as a snowboarder and shaped by both her Australian roots and the dramatic Pacific Northwest, her work captures the constant push and pull between resilience, change, and belonging. Often painting on recycled plywood, she reflects on how identity is formed through lived experience and our ongoing adaptation to the environments around us.

Jean Bradbury invites viewers into an imaginative world where native and invasive species become metaphors for belonging, displacement, and coexistence. Painting on organically shaped plywood panels and creating forest-like installations, she highlights both harmony and conflict within shared ecosystems. These relationships mirror her own experience as a settler on Indigenous land, with each plant and animal acting as a stand-in for broader stories of arrival, impact, and interdependence.

Working at the edge of abstraction and surrealism, Gregg Simpson embraces the fluidity and transformation inherent in nature. Beginning his paintings spontaneously, he allows colour to move freely before shaping it through layers of drawing and erasure. Forms emerge and dissolve, suggesting figures, landscapes, or still life without ever fully settling. His evolving compositions reflect a world in motion, reminding viewers that creativity—and life itself—is a continual process of reinterpretation.
 

About the artists:

Emma Fish is an artist whose work is deeply rooted in nature, shaped by her love of snowboarding and her connection to the mountains. After moving from Australia to British Columbia in 2016, she combined the vibrancy of her Australian upbringing with the dramatic beauty of the Canadian landscape, developing a style defined by bold colour and emotional depth. Her work has been exhibited across the province, including at the Chilliwack Museum, The Gallery George, and Centre A. In 2024, her piece Home was featured on the cover of the North Shore Art Crawl, and she was profiled in a four-page interview in Art Journal. She has presented a solo exhibition through North Van Arts’ Art in the Community program and has work on long-term display through Blueshore Financial’s Art in View project. Emma is also the founder of A World of Fish Creations, a sustainability-minded outdoor art brand offering hand-painted earrings and prints in local shops and online.

Born on a remote Scottish island and raised in New Brunswick, Jean Bradbury now lives on Bowen Island. She holds a BFA from Queen’s University and a degree in Illustration from Seattle Central College. Bradbury’s work explores environmental themes while reflecting on the social complexities of being a newcomer living on Indigenous land. Experienced as a muralist, she increasingly embraces gallery-based work, creating immersive installations and detailed painted pieces. Her artwork is held in private collections across Canada, the United States, Australia, Greece, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Kingdom. She has received grant funding from numerous municipalities, was shortlisted for the Kingston Prize in portraiture in 2023 and is a McMillan Fellowship recipient.

Gregg Simpson has been active in visual art and music since the mid-1960s. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and is included in numerous public and private collections worldwide. A BRAVO TV documentary, A New Arcadia: The Art of Gregg Simpson, chronicles his career. His work has appeared in major publications including L’Univers Surréaliste, Supériore Inconnu, and Surrealism Beyond Borders. In 2025, Simpson received his second solo exhibition at the Museo Eugenio Granell in Santiago de Compostela, where his work joins the museum’s permanent collection alongside leading Surrealist artists. He lives on Bowen Island with his wife, historical novelist Carol M. Cram.