Nicole Katsuras | The Diver And The Pearl
Nicole Katsuras | The Diver And The Pearl
March 6 - 31, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening reception: Saturday, March 8th, 2 - 5 pm | Artist in attendance
This March, Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin is proud to present The Diver And The Pearl, the perceptive new solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist, Nicole Katsuras. The Diver And The Pearl is an insightful metaphor on our collective journey through life, teaching us to navigate the world around us with hope and curiosity as we strive to uncover “pearls” along the way. Inspired by the elements of water, Ama Divers, the historical movements of CoBrA, Impressionism and Ukiyo-e, the artist invites the viewer to explore these floating worlds.
Artist statement:
"How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver" – Rumi.
“Like life, the sea is full of mystery and the unknown. Individually, our life’s journeys are unique, as is our search.
But the search for this “pearl” is universal — mixed with a bit of luck, our set of circumstances, goals and determination. We need to be like the divers, searching the great depths, collecting oysters along the way, and hoping that with a bit of hard work and good fortune, we may find a pearl or two in this lifetime.
For me, the art of painting and the sea are great metaphors of life and how we choose to use our limited time. These “floating worlds” in The Diver And The Pearl are made up of abstract and gestural forms. Swaths of rich colour, lines, and extrusions operate as archetypal forms of landscape - mountains, pools of water, trees, meadows, flora and fauna - that I revisit throughout my body of work. In this series, the Ama Divers were subjects and starting points for these new paintings and works on paper. This combined with the spirit of the historical movements CoBrA, Impressionism and Ukiyo-e provided the platform to experiment with paint.” – Nicole Katsuras
Katsuras develops her paintings with pure oil paint, using saturated colours in abstract forms to create imagined places. The compositions and viewpoints negotiate surface and depth as well as abstraction and representation. The elements of water are the most prominent in this series, with waterfalls, swirling pools, and deep dark seas acting as abstract passages for the viewer to explore. The piece “Freedive” represents a network of bright oil impasto and extrusions on a moody deep blue background. It is inspired by the woodblock print Abalone Divers by Utagawa Kuniyoshi which depicts divers in the depths of the savage sea and Claude Monet’s Wild Coast at Belle-Ile (1886), a scene of the untamed waters crashing and swirling on dark moody rocks.
In addition to this collection of oil paintings, Katsuras incorporates a series of small paintings on paper using Gouache. The piece “Mermaid” stands out, suggesting a floating underwater world with the skyline above, evoking the work To the Sea and Sun, 1922 by Wassily Kandinsky.
Nicole Katsuras was born in Toronto, Canada. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, UK, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Toronto. Her work can be found in many corporate collections including McCarthy Tetrault, Canaccord, Encana, Bennett Jones, CIBC, Luciano Benetton, Mirvish Collection, and Holt Renfrew.
Nicole Katsuras’ approach embraces various traditions in art history while attempting to create a new formal vocabulary. Informed by the nuances of the oil medium and a plethora of visual stimuli, Katsuras uses a bold yet intricate extruded paint technique to compose lively, elegant, emotion-filled and playful abstract scenes.
Nicole Katsuras has exhibited in Toronto, Seattle, Palm Beach, London, Seoul, and Paris. Her work is part of both private and public collections across North America and Europe.