When Nadine Kelln and Jenifer Darbellay first learned they were going to get to do an art show together, they were beyond elated.
The B.C. friends, who’d known each other since their children were in preschool together more than a decade ago, spent a whole year planning and getting excited for their exhibit, which would feature both of their paintings.
But before it could ever come to fruition, Darbellay was killed. She was one of 11 victims of a car-ramming attack on the Lapu Lapu Day street festival last April in Vancouver.
Now, the show — called Gaze and Connect — will go on in Darbellay’s honour.
“For me, it was all about realizing this dream that we had together and making it actually happen,” Kelln said. “It became even more important after she passed.”
When Kelln approached Darbellay’s husband, Noel Johansen, about putting on the show in her honour, he was on board immediately.
Johansen spends his days surrounded by his late wife’s colourful and textured paintings, which adorn the walls of their home.
Now he wants to share those paintings with the wider world.
“Jen, I feel, wasn’t celebrated enough in life. Her art wasn’t celebrated enough either,” he said.
Johansen describes his late wife’s art as an expression of her “unique flavour and mysterious sense of seeing the world.”
“I say ‘mysterious’ because some of her paintings have been faceless. And as Nadine so aptly has said, you fill in the gaps,” he said.
“Her art doesn’t give everything away; it invites you in to do just that, which is to add your experience into the world that she creates.”
When Kelln looks at Darbellay’s work, she sees her friend, through and through.
“You really feel the loving, warm energy of Jen when you’re in the presence of her paintings,” she said. “You feel all that emotion and heart that she poured into her art as well.”
It was Darbellay, Kelln says, who inspired her to take up painting herself 10 years ago, something she’d never done before.
“I fell in love with her art immediately. It had so much energy and movement and bold colour and texture, like it was exciting,” she said.
“You know when your heart skips a beat when you look at art? That’s what her art made me feel like.”
When she paints now, she says, she still feels her friend’s presence.
“I feel that energy. I feel her in my head saying, ‘It’s great, keep going!’ She was always so encouraging.”
Johansen says his wife had a way of bringing out the best in people.
“She made you feel like you were the most important, amazing person in the room,” he said.
Since Darbellay died, Johansen says he feels a constant “low hum of loss.” But it hit hard this week, when news broke about the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, here we go again,’” he said. “I didn’t imagine when I grew up here that, you know, these things would ever happen in Canada.”
He hopes that, at some point, he can offer some comforting words to the survivors, as survivors of other violent events have offered to him and his family.
“Empathy is the biggest thing we have,” he said.
In the wake of yet another tragedy, Johansen and Kelln have found themselves thinking about the fragility of mental health and the importance of human connection, something they say Darbellay exemplified in her life.
“Without connection, that’s where things go sideways,” Kelln said. “And Jen was all about love, kindness, motherhood, creativity being central to her being. And this show is named Gaze and Connect because connection is so important and how love can really heal.”
Asked what it will feel like to step into that gallery and see his late wife’s work adorning the walls, Johansen says he’s not worried.
“I live with Jen’s paintings all the time,” he said. “So in some ways, it’s like going home.”
The exhibit is hosted by the South Delta Artists Guild from Feb. 13–22, at Gallery 1710 in Tsawwassen, B.C., south of Vancouver, and features pieces by Darbellay, Kelln and artist Heather Edelmeier.
