Painted pianos pop up for public play Friday in Oak Bay

Painted pianos pop up again in Oak Bay this summer, ready for public play Friday.

Six pianos painted by Gillian Redwood, Robert Amos, Jennifer McIntyre, Christine Gollner, Sherry Tompalski, and Senior Art Students at St. Michaels University School will be installed at Loon Bay Park, Estevan Village, McNeill Bay, Turkey Head Walkway, Willows Beach, and Oak Bay Village during Arts and Culture Fortnight, Aug. 9 to 23.

Gollner, who painted at École Willows school, said this new canvas was particularly fun.

After the sanding and priming she “just started to paint, then it grew from there,” said the Oak Bay artist.

“I didn’t know what the piano would be like to work with. That’s what’s so difficult, I’m working with a shape, It shouldn’t be that difficult but it was,” she said with a chuckle. “The surface is great to paint on. A surface that’s firm and hard like this and not giving like a canvas, is much better to paint on than a canvas.”

But the cards atop the near-finished product as the school year winds down attests to the best part of the project so far – her audience.

“The children here at the school have been wonderful, they’ve made it just a delight to paint here,” Gollner said.

An arbutus tree stems through her visage of a shoreline on the piano with a cheeky nod to nature in the cougar on one side, and deer on the other.

“It’s sort of space specific art, everybody down there is thinking about boats and the ocean,” said Gollner, whose piano is set to grace Turkey Head.

Pianos will be out from June 29 to Sept 7.

Pianos can be played during the day and will be covered overnight.