Hiba Akkad, Untitle, 2012, mixed media on canvas work (courtesy Galerie Tanit)
Click on the image above to go to NPR News (Thanks to Painter’s Table)
May 8, 2012
Skipping the Flat Stone Across the Water
The NewArt TV video, on video and found art artist, Marie Lorenz, videographs Lorenz unloading her row boat, re-landing, exploring the 21st century bays around New York. She picks items from the shores and beaches, trash that the river or ocean has landed, and re-states them in the Gallery setting. The images from the gallery and videos lead me from environmental subjects to the subject of the mobility and migration of people, the study of people and civilizations, and gender.
However, I make that journey through art works that came to my mind, such as, Bill Reid’s, War Canoe (see news item below) which is paddled by Haida up the Seine 150 km to the city of Paris in 1989, for the celebration of the work of Claude Levis-Strauss (he also paddles for the last few km) and the Museum of Man, Paris. To the art works of Migrations at Tate Britains exhibition, 2012. And, finally Theodore Gericault’s, Raft of the Medusa, 1819, at the Louvre.
The video catches Lorenz walking the land too, with camera attached to long pole fixed to her back. She also jumps into the water and swims with it. What a curious being.
War Canoe and celebrations, Bill Reid in Paris.
Migrations: Journeys into British Art, Web Site.
Ruth Padel, Unstill Lives: Tate Britain’s Migrations exhibition, Guardian.co.uk Jan.2012
Larger than life at the Louvre, Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, Oil on canvas, 4.91m x 7.16 m, 1819
April 29, 2012
Non-objective/abstract expressionism – 2012
Lila Lewis Irving, Ondine, 2007, acrylic on canvas.
Painting; with a brush, abstracting from recognizable forms, working with materials, color, forms, comes in all forms; on my blog Kngwarreye, Moran, Stamp, Marden, Steir, Kandinsky, and Basquiat and now Lewis Irving. Lewis Irving is 76 years old and a smallish but what is the perfect size gallery, the Art Gallery of Mississauga (youtube talks by Lewis Irving), retrospective is on view for a short time still: Con Spirito. The earth, water, mineral large paintings in the exhibit are for me the most successful. In a recent review, she was called the pouring queen! She also teaches and on youtube there are a few demonstrations of her technique. I see the meditative possibilities in her process.
April 23, 2012
William Kurelek and the Retrospective
The Maze, 1953, Gouache on board, 91 x 121 cm.
I caught the William Kurelek retrospective before it ends its’ stay at the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Curators Mary Jo Hughes, Tobi Bruce, and Andrew Kear do a terrific job of providing some insight into Kurelek’s world stressed in the subtitle: The Messenger. This intrigues me, because it implies some mysticism, or message. So, as I wandered through the exhibit, I keep this in mind.
85 paintings exhibit some of the common themes and elements particular to Kurelek. The subject matter of this exhibit include the artist’s identity, religious scripture, the foresight of the downfall of city (industrial) endeavors, belonging, and the fine art framing workshop. The period of moral exacting on Kurelek’s part is soon after his conversion to religious life. The city of Hamilton appears in one of the more amazing explosive steaming paintings in detail. To look at them today they are as contemporary as ‘occupier’s’ concerns.
As a fine art framer, Kurelek fashioned his own in clever and decorative ways that compliment the subjects of his painting. In one painting, Kurelek appears to have extended the outside frame at the bottom; a painting is literally framed within the painting. Ukrainian decorative textiled ribbons are attached to a few paintings of traditional Ukraine events, or carved and painted patterns on the wooden frames. He uses barn boards as well as elements in frames on rustic rural scenes. I notice he also paints the inside edge of some frames to compliment colors within the painting.
Kurelek was prolific. He started painting in the early 1950s, and travelled to Mexico, England, many European countries, Israel, Turkey, and Syria, and continued to travel in the late 1960s to South Africa, Kenya, Hong Kong, and India. From these I have had glimpses of scenes he paints from his travel experiences in India, Canada’s north, and more. There are also mural projects at the end of his life in 1977 that are missing from this show, but there is so much of his work.
Kurelek’s life story, however, isn’t so different than many boys, or girls for that matter, artists of immigrant parents in Canada. He is the boy that is good at drawing and, apparently for his farming immigrant father (and family?), little else, which is never true. What is wonderful and painful to see at the sametime is the detail with which Kurelek would draw and paint it all out, it is in the details. He attends to the duties and obligations of the farm, traditional family and community gatherings, and the expectations of the 1st generation son, i.e. to become a Doctor. He goes to school, works in resource industry, and returns to school to paint. Eventually, Kurelek leaves for England to get away from the pressures and antagonisms of his family and life on the farm, and commits himself to hospital. It is at the hospital that he finds guidance and encouragement to paint. Through the help of people and the Roman Catholic Church he undertakes religious instruction. From then on religious messages underly his work. Drawing and painting and framing is his working life, and perhaps he finally gains the meaning he needs through religious purpose. I see this in the smaller paintings of framing tools: blacking brush, and gloves.
Reminiscences of Youth, 1968, mixed media on hardboard, 149.5 x 125.1 cm. The Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
As I read reviews of this exhibit I find similar stories of coming across Kurelek’s work. The first time I see his Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish immigrant prairie series is as a youth. I recognize the imagery and techniques, the way he draws, as illustrations, and in his career some of his paintings become series in illustrated children’s books. The paintings are large and the colors are bright washes. He works in oils, with ink, and gouache on masonite boards. Figures are rounded, cartoons almost, which suggest these images are from the imagination of the painter. I didn’t see any of the darkness until in the last decade or so when I come across his work again when researching Art Brut. He completes, The Maze, during his time under the care of Drs. in the psychiatric hospital in England. In it he reveals the inside of his skull, which he has sliced open to the interior vignettes depicting the pressures and painful experiences he has as a boy, youth, and adult; drawn with his recognizable volume filled characters and animals, perspective, colors, and details. The detail is dazzling. It tells his story to his Drs, and to us.
Manitoba Party, 1964, oil on masonite, 121.9 x 152.6 cm.
The Return of William Kurelek’s Apocalyptic Vision, by Robert Enright, The Globe and Mail, Toronto.
William Kurelek: The Messenger [The exhibit web site]
The Maze [The documentary movie trailer]
Wynick Tuck Gallery, Toronto, see more of Kurelek’s work here.
Also, the drawing/paintings of Kristin Bjornerud and sculptural installation by Kim Adams on view at the AGH continues the thread of Kurelek.. for me anyway. Details and washes of color, mysticism and storytelling. Links below.
Here Is Where We Meet, 15 x 11 in. Watercolor and gouache on paper. 2009
Kristin Bjornerud: Safe Harbour
Bruegel-Bosch-Bus - 1997/ongoing VB bus, model kits, toy, HO-scale figures dimensions variable Collection: Art Gallery of Hamilton
April 17, 2012
The Family Treasury
Reader’s Digest Family Treasury of Great Painters and Great Paintings, The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. Pleasantville (New York), 1969. 192 pgs. [Fourth Printing; original copyrighted and 1st edition 1965]
Not a text for art history students, circa 1965-69, mass produced, terrific condition, I picked this book up at a Value Village recently. What a treasure in typography alone on the content pages. No surprise that female painters are not included. The interest for me is the class distinction, for the audience for this book is the working and middle class. The narrative goes like this: Art in our time, The age of greatness, Masters of old europe, The new tradition, The triumph of vision. The index is a guide to painters and paintings.
April 11, 2012
Voice, Speech, Writing and Painting
Roger Denson’s write up on Mira Schor’s current show in NYC is one to save for painting classes. I have.
Mira Schor Reclaims Voice, Speech and Writing for Painting, @ The Huffington Post.
April 5, 2012
Trees – Kim Dorland
Untitled, oil on canvas on wood panel, 96 x 72 in. 2011
Tree House, oil on canvas on wood panel, 96 x 72 in. 2011
On the weekend I saw two paintings by Kim Dorland at the McMicheal Canadian Art Collection, in Kleinberg, Ontario. They are included in the exhibit entitled, The Tree: Form and Substance, by Chief Curator, Katerina Atanassova. The first impressions I thought them naive and a nod to the 70s. The paint is applied rudely, as are the color choices. This is anti-painting. It appears the painter knows something about painting, but is not taking on any known technique. It turns out they are likely the newest paintings and most contemporary paintings in the exhibition (is the paint even dry yet?).
In what I call the sunset painting, similar to the one above from the same series, the yellow soaked sunrays graphically splay outwards to the four edges of the canvas. Dark trees silhouette lava lamp like outlines with muddy paint in blacks that lay flat on the canvas. Bulbous spots of paint are applied by a stick or other utility tool, or squeezed out of the tube directly onto canvas. The illusion of the sunset and small shoreline create the perspectival space. Large rock paint coagulates are attached to the painting in sponge paint covered sagging sack growths. Nails help keep the paint attached to the board. These are ugly paintings, and they are large, 3 x 1.5 metres. The second painting, same size, depicts the tree house in what could be the fall/winter night scene. Layers of wood boards attach to the canvas literally to make up the tree house and its depths. The tree silhouette is against a flat dead dark blue clear sky. There are no leaves on the trees. A foggy grey sparkling path leads straight up to the tree and tree house ladder. This is utopia.
Kim Dorland and I have more in common than an interest in the conceptual Canadian landscape or our personal experience, and the cultural notion of land, rather than actual land use in Canada. We graduated university within a year of each other. Our paths must have crossed at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, Vancouver, but I don’t remember his work then. He went on to an MFA at York University in Toronto. I went to England for my MFA. We received our M.A.s the same year 2003. But, there are maybe 14 years difference in age.
While, my approach to painting is about the exhibition as well, Dorland’s subject matter could be the male painter tradition in Canada, but is that just because of the common male gender? What appears as the artists personal experiences, like the author, is suspect. Indeed, whether we can trust the images depicted here does not matter. His early paintings depict young people hanging out, similar scenes can be found in any country town across Canada. I recognize that too. However, it is a particular time from the 70s that I remember. Long hair rockers with friends, listening to music, playing cards and smoking, wearing hunter/worker red plaid jackets, drinking around bonne fires, with ruins of wrecked cars in yards of old farms and old houses. The traces of young lives read in the messages cut into tree trunks. This is a Canadian lifestyle that hasn’t been seen in painting until now.
The oddness I think about the Sunset (my title, not his) and Tree House paintings may have something to do with the gallery, and with viewing paintings independent of each other rather than as the solo exhibit. The two paintings come from different series. I think these paintings were not meant to be seen together, or seperate from the series they belong to. They are from different series. The narrative of each series is clearly seen separately on Dorland’s web site. The McMichael Gallery is a large post and beam space. It is all dark wood and sand clay between beams with a high peaked ceiling. Dorland’s paintings are set high on one wall against large fireplace rocks (fieldstone?). The temporary short white gyprock constructions (walls) in the middle of the room seperate the space between those and the art works against the dark wood and rock walls. My difficulty with the paintings may have come up because of this separation as well. These particular Dorland paintings do not have people in them, and this particular exhibit is about trees, however, this also fits them well with the Tom Thomson legacy for the McMichael’s collection, and the Group of 7. People didn’t interest Thomson or the Group of 7 in most of their paintings. But, this is the difference between Dorland and the modern artists. Dorland is presently taking on motifs by the modern artists, in newer works his wife is the subject matter, ala de Kooning.
The 70s I knew were changing times for young men and women. In the 70s a new masculinity appeared. The cars, Camaros and Challengers, the music, from Led Zepplin to Pink Floyd, the guys, long leather coats, long mustache, shoulder length hair, always there, but a heightened machismo misogyny was made visible to young women too. Young women were breaking into new fields of work and more choices were available to them. We were finding out what it was like to work in a man’s world, besides the down sides of any oppressive point of view, or system. Dorland was born in 1974. He wouldn’t have experienced this, however, the culture of the 70s does carry on in morphed version of what it is, in people’s memories, and in cultural memories for small bush towns.
Dorland’s work has been grouped with the extreme painting moniker along with contemporary Alison Schulnik and others. Dorland himself has said he doesn’t think of it as extreme painting, he is just taking painting further. I take this as meaning the thick application of paint and colors, not necessarily subject matter, but then again we get to see the folks, youth, and transportation, houses, etc in Dorland’s painting that take Tom Thomson’s vision of Canada further. Dorland is specific about where he is coming from and going with his paintings, you can see this on his web site. For me, the paintings don’t necessarily stand on their own. A complete installation of a series, like a 70s vinyl album, is better together than apart.
Kim Dorland web site.
Maclean’s article, 2010.
Canadian Art Scene, article with images.
Interview with Kim Dorland @ Art Sync.
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March 28, 2012
Painting Gals and de Kooning
The February 2012 edition of BorderCrossings has 3 interviews with women artists and painters, Cecily Brown, April Gornik, and Monica Tap who spent time with the de Kooning show at the MoMA, NYC. Some of it is online, click image above for the web site, and online excerpts. I haven’t my copy yet, but can’t wait to do so!
