The Sooke Fine Arts Show & the Local Arts Scene
A summer juried show and a coast full of working studios make Sooke one of Vancouver Island's quiet art destinations.
No. 1 A Show That Earns Its Reputation
Every August, Sooke hosts what it bills as one of the largest juried fine art shows in western Canada — and the claim holds up. The Sooke Fine Arts Show draws several hundred works by artists from across British Columbia, selected through a competitive jury process, and fills a venue large enough to make you forget you're in a town of fewer than fifteen thousand people. Paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, and mixed-media work hang shoulder to shoulder. Much of it is for sale, and sales happen; collectors make the drive out from Victoria specifically for the show.
What keeps it credible is the jury. Entry is not guaranteed, and the standard of accepted work is genuinely high. Local artists compete alongside artists from across the province on equal footing, which means the show functions as a real measure of quality rather than a community pat on the back. It has been running long enough to have its own alumni — artists who were first noticed here and have since built substantial careers.
A real measure of quality rather than a community pat on the back.
No. 2 A Working Coast of Working Artists
The show is the visible tip of something that runs deeper. Sooke and the surrounding coast have attracted artists and craftspeople for decades, drawn by the landscape, the light off Sooke Harbour, and land prices that have historically been lower than Victoria's. Many settled and stayed.
The Marshall-Inman Gallery — founded by artists Basil Marshall-Inman and Glenys Marshall-Inman — is among the most established presences, representing serious work in a purpose-built space. Barking Dog Studio offers another working studio presence, and the furniture-paint brand Fat Paint, with its roots in Sooke, reflects how craft and commerce have always mixed comfortably here. The Sooke Region Museum holds cultural context for all of it: the logging and fishing history that shaped the built landscape artists now paint.
Basil Marshall-Inman
Artist & co-founder, Marshall-Inman Gallery
Produces handcrafted furniture and woodwork in a purpose-built space on the family’s farm — among the most established presences on the coast.
Glenys Marshall-Inman
Artist & co-founder, Marshall-Inman Gallery
Works in pottery and craft pieces; the gallery’s informal studio tours take visitors behind the finished work.
Beyond fixed galleries, studio tours bring visitors directly into artists' working spaces — a format that suits the dispersed geography of this coast, where studios are tucked along rural roads rather than clustered in a gallery district. The T'Sou-ke Nation, whose territory this coast has always been, holds its own deep tradition of visual culture that predates the settler art scene by millennia.
None of this requires the visitor to be an art buyer. The Fine Arts Show is free to browse, the studios are genuinely welcoming, and the landscape that draws the painters — the headlands of East Sooke Regional Park, the river valley, the strait — is open to everyone.