I am in the middle of preparing for an upcoming art exhibit that features my paintings and my sister’s photography. We are calling the show “Two Visions, One name. Explorations of the natural world”.

  We are outdoorsy girls my sister and I. Probably a product of having grown up in a semi-rural town in a time when there was little TV and certainly no other electronic entertainment.

  Apart from being sisters, this seems to be what our work most has in common. We still hang out together and go on nature finding missions, with or without kids, dogs and friends in tow. We are the nuts pulled over to the side of the road with cameras reverently pointed at the sky to capture an elusive cloud formation. We are card-carrying members of a little known club called The Cloud Appreciation Society. Seriously…you can check them out at: http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

So we share subject matter even though our mediums and interpretations are varied.

  What we share more than anything else is the urge to create. So pondering the theme for the exhibit brought to mind one of my favorite conundrums. Is creative talent inherited? Our parents and their siblings were not artists, but our paternal grandmother was a costume designer of some renown for European Opera.

  The funny thing is that if talent is inherited, it seems to have skipped a generation. Our cousins are a creative lot, without exception. There are painters and photographers, dancers and musicians, actors and writers. The den Hertogs of my generation are all expressing themselves in a creative way.

  I like the idea of tracing it back to my grandmother in part because her story has some mystery attached to it. The family buzz is that she was actually the daughter of a traveling gypsy. Her parents and many siblings were blond and blue eyed, one and all. My grandmother was olive skinned with a head of jet black hair.

  It’s a lovely romantic notion that my sister and I are descendants of a gypsy, and to my mind it also accounts for our wandering ways and the need for being close to the land and growing things, let alone a strong creative streak.

  We will be showing more than our individual art at the exhibition. We’ll be bringing along our shared inheritance and maybe a little gypsy spirit.

Two Visions, One Name. Explorations of the Natural World

An exhibition of art works exploring the natural world by painter Laura den Hertog and photographer Karen den Hertog

June 18-21, 2010

Galerie Ouest

St Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, Canada

Two Visions, One Name.

(450) 437-3584

Laura and Karen den Hertog reside in Rosemere, a small town north of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.