Paintings of Rebecca Spit & MacKenzie Beach
September 25 – October 8, 2025
Visual Space Gallery, 3352 Dunbar Street, Vancouver
Noon – 5 PM daily with extended hours Tuesdays & Fridays until 8 PM
View installation

Haven: a place where one is free from intrusion; see also: refuge, retreat, shelter, sanctuary

Thirty-seven exuberant, colorful new paintings capture the landscape of two of Haughton’s most cherished havens in British Columbia: MacKenzie Beach near Tofino and Rebecca Spit Park on Quadra Island.

“The concept for this exhibition began with a spectacular sunset viewed from MacKenzie Beach in Tofino: what I call a “sherbet-color” light display. Lyne and I had traveled by ferry and overstuffed car to the cabin, unpacked, then looked out to see a peach, pink and turquoise display unfolding. I decided I needed to paint a series of small, almost square close-ups of twisted treetops against the shifting spectrum of that sky. The previous summer I had sketched out several large works of Quadra Island’s Rebecca Spit. I brought them with me to Tofino to develop and finish. Energized, I decided to expand the series to ten larger works. Then, as I laid out my palette, I decided, in addition, to do a series of small, horizontal works of dawn at Rebecca Spit to balance out the new larger works. And so it went… Seven months later, I had completed 37 paintings of MacKenzie Beach and Rebecca Spit – my two havens.”
— D. Haughton