Everyone is welcome to attend the free opening night event for the launch of the exhibit Art for an Oil Free Coast on Dec. 11, a multi-media evening involving a book launch, film screening and art exhibition. Tickets for the event must be reserved in advance at http://oilfreecoastsaltspring.eventbrite.com.

The opening event launches an exhibit that features the work of Robert Bateman, W. Allan Hancock, Carol Evans and many other celebrated Canadian artists, who believe British Columbia’s rugged coastal rainforest is worth safeguarding. And last summer, on an expedition organized by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, fifty of them headed up the coast with their paintbrushes, canvases and carving tools to capture the landscape through their art.

The original artworks have been donated by the artists and are now part of a traveling art show and auction to raise public awareness and funds for conserving the wild and diverse marine environment of Canada’s rain coast, including the Great Bear Rainforest, currently in the path of various proposed pipeline and supertanker routes connected to the Alberta tar sands.

The art on display is also showcased in the recently released art book Canada’s Raincoast at Risk: Art for an Oil-Free Coast, published in November by Raincoast Conservation Foundation that includes the work of each artist, along with words by Briony Penn, Wade Davis, David Suzuki, and Jessie Housty.

Trailer of the short film that will be screened: