“Bijou” December 5 – 28, 2024

Recently I was struck by the number of recent arrivals to the gallery that were warm in colour.  There was a tonal similarity with hues of crimson, cherry and ochre, contrasted by the starkness of white.  What began as a glancing visual observation has developed into an exhibition of artworks that envelop you in their presence or absence of colour.  The “red” or “white” is not arbitrary.   It has been chosen deliberately by each artist as an accent or mood, a subject or a way of evoking a specific feeling.  When installed together, I began to pick-up on a specific effect: a jewel-like quality that both glistens and soothes.  Is it merely the power of the colour?  Or is it the impact of its meaning.  Elegant and lush, these artworks are a perfect representation for the season.

Artists included:

Margot Ariss’s sculpted clay panels from the early 1980s combine clay letters with complex molded and shaped forms.  Plaster, canvas, cloth, acrylic and cellulose are combined to build up the smooth rolling designs that hint at clouds, snow falls, storms and landscapes.   She appeals to our emotions through the combined use of light and shadow and the poignant clay lettered poems.

Ronald Bloore, one of the founding members of the Regina Five, was best known for his subtle, monochromatic abstracts. Working predominantly in tones of white, Bloore renounced the use of colour and created intricate low-relief works inspired by the symbolism and architecture of early civilizations. This highly detailed, multi-toned work from 1983 is from his Rough / Stick Chasuble series.

Susan Day is interested in using the material qualities of clay to tell stories, both personal and universal.  Drawing directly on the clay vessels, Day focuses on the figure and representations of the body.  There is a descriptive aspect to the sculptures where dream imagery, repeated shapes and symbols and text emerge.  Faces represent the every-man / any-woman, an anonymous figure that is both relatable and mysterious.

Susan Dobson‘s “Slide Library” series of photographs includes a specific set of Canadian art slides which were stored and organized in red Canadian Tire tool cabinets.  The photos depict, from a birds-eye-view, the slides ranging from Burtynsky to  Colville, Karsh through to Rita Letendre, colour coded depending on the artistic medium.  Since all universities are now using digital technologies, the series was a way for Susan to memorialize an analogue, human-organized technology.

Between 1975-1981, Aganetha Dyck worked on “Sizes 8-46”, a series of shrunken sweaters, hats, blankets and dresses.  Dyck purchased woolen clothing from thrift stores and sculpted them in an old wringer washing machine for days on end.  The series ended when Aganetha’s washing machine’s motor burnt out and began her life as an artist altering common house-hold objects into extraordinary sculptures.

Gathie Falk’s earliest paintings are heavily influenced by the style of Post-Impressionism and the figuration of German Expressionism.  Her highly keyed palette and emotionally charged compositions depicted architectural spaces, figures and landscapes.   However, she was not interested in “painting pretty pictures” and instead wanted to paint original paintings with strength and intelligence.  “The Staircase” is filled with energy and immediately tells a story, unique to Falk.

Jonathan Forrest‘s luminous abstract paintings are open, thin, clear and flat, self-referential with no illusions to space or subject.  Created by pulling paint across the canvas, the layers of colour, shapes and textures on his brightly coloured backgrounds are both opaque and transparent.  The colours react to each other, jewel-like in their tone, indebted to his knowledge of colour theory and play of light.

From Wanda Koop‘s 2009 VIEW from HERE exhibition, “Untitled (Red Sign)” explores human emotions and our relationship with technological advancement.  The serene landscape creates a dialogue about who we are as humans and reveals aspects of our human psychology in a digital age.  A precursor to her “Hybrid Human” paintings included in her 2010 touring retrospective, the painting foreshadows the future with electric and poignant power.

Lush and sumptuous, Angie Quick‘s seductive painting explores notions of happiness and joy, love, both discovered and lost and the human form in all of its beauty and vulnerabilities.  Romantic in tone, the enmeshed figures tumble and cavort set within a luxurious space within a riot of imagery.

David Urban‘s abstraction is defined by bold collisions of line and shape, clashing tones and kinetic brushstrokes. With “The Mountain M #2 (Study)”, the mirroring composition and paired-down colour palette creates a canvas charged with energy.