|
Katie Brennan - Chasing Waves
Katie Brennan has named her exhibition
Chasing Waves but
Brennan has been making
waves ever since she picked up a paint brush. Having
grown up in the Okanagan, she graduated from Emily Carr with a
BFA in 2005 and in 2009, she received her Masters of Fine Arts
from The University of Guelph. In 2010 and 2011, she was an
instructor for drawing and painting at UBCO. During this time,
she set into motion oook.ca
an on-line arts and culture magazine with extensive and
up-to-date events listings. Currently, besides an exacting
painting practice, Brennan is the curator at Lake Country Art
Gallery where she is causing a splash with her energetic
programming.
An
introductory exhibition was previewed in the Headbones Drawer’s
Gallery in October with Brennan’s large paper pieces based on
corporate car logos on display. These stripe-y monochromatic
works laid the ground for a new series that first appeared
during her Banff residency.
Challenged by the grandeur of the surrounding landscape,
Brennan’s head turned from the concerns of materialistic
signifiers to nature. Sounds of the mountain streams were
pervasive and seeped into her work. The stripes became water
runnels, currents and effervescent bubbles.
Lorne Wagman - Stone Lichen Weed
From Ontario, Lorne Wagman’s watercolours and ink drawings bring
the ragged, bushy, overgrown and blousy side of nature into
contrast with Brennan’s architectonic handling. Wagman looks
closely and recognises every weed, lichen or stone with
consideration.
Wagman lives near Tom Thompson’s Owen Sound and it is as if the
spirit of the famous painter inhabits his personal aura.
Wagman’s world grows from his paper pieces, overflows from his
lush canvases and is deservedly recognised by Ontario’s art
elite as authentic and inspired. Yet Wagman’s practice is down
to earth and connected to the flora with a near intimate
proximity. Wagman breathes nature.
e Feught
We
look towards the far distant for a sense of something other than
the hum-drum existence that often takes over our routine lives.
Vacations, videos, reading, music – all become the escape routes
to enrichment. Afar Per se
fulfills the wanderlust and slakes the thirst for exoticism,
transferring a National Geographic mind frame into the refined
halls of high culture.
Amar
from Afar is actually residing and working quite close for his
studio is in Lumby, BC – yet that fact could translate into a
rather exotic imagining for a New Yorker. Headbones Gallery
visited the artist’s studio in the fall and were rewarded with a
revelation as expanding as that of visiting another country.
Amar’s work is not static. It reaches backwards in time as it
projects forward and seldom is there only a surface meaning. But
this is not a plea for nostalgia or even a reinforcement of
exotic otherness for Amar doesn’t let the image rest. He pokes
at it, jabs at it with the dissonance of virtual life and in
doing so pulls his visual story line into the theatrical realms.
There is a taste of intrigue, plot, climax and even the
potential for a narrative resolution. He gives us sufficient
clues but doesn’t reveal the ending.
Diane
Feught’s actual past, present and future have rarefied
beginnings. Feught grew up in an Anglican home. As an adult, she
lived in a Buddhist priory in Edmonton for seven years where she
experienced the lush overlap of philosophical, spiritual and
cultural diversity while still living in the heart of a
‘typical’ Canadian milieu. Her oil paintings and gouaches leave
room for study as well as speculation as to their narrative
source. Often with a strong composition that supports the drama
of the imagery, her technique – impeccable and practiced –
supports the strangeness of her subjects by granting an
immediate viability to the juxtaposition of elements. The
overwhelming perfection and balance take over any doubt at the
unusual imagery. Feught also backs her innuendos with
information, detailing with a precision to provoke applause.
Afar
Per se
- what does it mean? Per se does not only mean “intrinsically”
but also, “by, of, for or in itself”. It seems a fitting
description of the works of Amar from Afar and Diane Feught with
all of the allusions to otherness that they inspire.
The
opening reception for Afar
Per se is Friday, November 11, which is
Remembrance Day and
11/11/11. Even the date is fittingly evocative yet cryptic.
Trance
and Nilt to cosmic Eastern sounds and melodies during the
opening reception with Daniel
Stark on sarode,
Bill Boyd on cello and
Gaz on guitar.
|
LINKS
