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1) Your practice is primarily focused on floral painting, what about this subject matter, if anything, draws you to it and continues to inspire abstraction and formal experimentation?

Their variety of shape and colour, fragility and emphemerality.

2) What prompted the introduction of negative space and white ground in your paintings? How does it inform your work and what is its significance?

My brushwork tends to be impulsive and full of energy and which can lead to overcrowded paintings with nowhere for the eye to rest so space can be a place for the viewer to rest and to exercise one's own imagination. I love to look at Chinese landscape paintings where brush marks often hang suspended in white. A slightly under painted piece can be better than one which has been “finished off".

3) Could you enlighten us about how your compositions start, how many iterations they go through before they’re considered ‘finished’ (i.e. flipping the canvas, erasing, painting over, overpainting etc.)?

My compositions start in all kinds of ways, I don’t have a set method. Some paintings, the lucky ones, come right away and are finished in a couple of sessions. But this is rare. Often I paint right over a previous painting which is kind of like some sort of seeking revenge. A painting I’m not satisfied with will sit in my studio until I feel sufficiently removed from it to attack it again, often upside down which is especially freeing. Destruction, which is both satisfying and frightening, can play as big a part in a painting as creation. Many paintings never see the light of day.

4) Over the course of your career, you’ve transitioned from painting from still life arrangements to painting from photographs, how do you find these two approaches differ?

When I work from photos I don’t have to hurry up and get the thing done before the petals fall off and I have all the time I want I can take more liberties with the composition. The one step remove that a photo gives means I can better see the shapes and colours as an abstraction. I can also meld subject matter from several photos into one canvas.

5) Along the lines of the previous question: you often paint multiple paintings from the same photograph, could you describe how each piece and the experience of painting each piece is related or distinct from one another?

Each time I paint another piece from the same photo I need to find something new in it and to explore the possibilities for abstraction more and more. Since I am seldom if ever perfectly satisfied with a painting I often want to have another go. Riffing off the same subject again and again and getting to know its possibilities better is satisfying.

6) What kind of material properties have you observed through the act of painting? How does your handling of paint or your perception of form change as you paint? 

Material properties…..hmmm. Gravity and drips, gloopiness, butteriness?  A comforting smell.  The more I paint the more I am possessed by the qualities of the paint.  

7) This new work demonstrates some new palettes for you—are there particular pigments   or contrasts that are exciting you these days?

The Unforeseeable Fuschia which I always thought was a cheap trick.  I love the aubergine colour that the shrieky pthalo green can create with Alizarin Crimson. 

8) How would you say your work has developed in the past ten years and how do you see it evolving in the future?

The gesture is getting more and more important in the work and I seem to be getting up closer and closer to the flowers. Also I like to paint bigger and bigger. Like most artists I have no clue as to where I am going. Painting is a leap into the unknown.

VIEW NEW WORKS BY JAMIE EVRARD

1) Could you lend some insight into the tongue-in-cheek title of your exhibition 'Girls Gone Wild'?

With this body of work, I found I had the chance to really show my own experience. I'm out in nature doing all the same wilderness activities that are still thought of as a male pursuit. All the female figures in my work are participating in their surroundings, they don't stand outside of them. They’re not merely passive still-life objects like in other landscape paintings, they're building fires, climbing fences, hiking, paddling, etc. 

2) How long have you been developing this body of work?

I think this body of work has been coming together for a while. I've always been interested in landscape and the history of Canadian painting. To gather my research and find inspiration, I trek into the woods during the summer on backcountry adventures, lugging canoes through swamps crawling with leeches, collecting and chopping wood for campfires and fighting off blackflies, horseflies and every other type of biting critter out there; because of this I've always felt a little at odds with the traditions of landscape painting. It's dominated by male painters and often women are still used as part of the scenery.

3) From which artistic sources do you find inspiration?

Social media platforms, especially Instagram have influenced my work through their set colour schemes and filters. I also find myself often drawing colour inspiration from current fashion trends. I think that love of colour is the biggest factor in every painting that I do. I tend to get obsessive about colour. My canoe is this really lovely shade of soft robins-egg blue and I've used that shade for the under-paintings in at least half of this body of work. Emerald green also really got under my skin over the past couple months and came out in a lot of these paintings.

I think Kim Dorland’s work has brought new life to landscape and brought it into the contemporary art realm. He's a major source of inspiration along with Peter Doig (perhaps my favourite artist of all), Wanda Koop. I find Christopher Pratt’s use of physical space as its own subject really interesting. I also think that Thrush Holmes neon lines may be subconsciously influencing elements of my work. 

4) How long does it take to complete a painting from conception to final execution?

My process tends to be a fairly long one. I work from photos most often, but what most people don't know is that I rarely use photos that aren't at least a year or two old. Any photos I take from research trips or vacations, I will put away. I will usually forget about them, and wait until those photos aren't photos to me anymore, but instead they've become reminders of specific memories. I need to have an emotional response to an image to make it interesting enough for me to paint. It normally takes a year or two for that to happen. I remember a moment or a feeling that held significance for me and then I go back through my files to try and find the photo that matches that moment. 

After I've decided on an idea, I do a couple sketches in watercolour/pastel/ink/pencil before reverse-engineering that composition with oil paint. In watercolour I work from lightest to darkest, and in oil paint I work from darkest to lightest. This process gives me enough space from the representational image to enjoy the more meditative and intuitive aspects of painting. 

5) Your paintings appear to be highly pre-planned. What kind of techniques are you experimenting with?

In terms of technique, I've been really enjoying the physicality of pushing paint around on canvas and working with oil paint in all sorts of different forms. From working with it almost like watercolour and diluting it to let it drip and mix and flow to sculpting the paint up in different areas to drawing with it on the canvas; mark-making has become a huge part of my process.  

6) Tell us something we wouldn’t guess from your work.

I often add in little objects, almost like Easter eggs. I think that people miss these, so it's always worth taking a second look just in case. There’s a little portage sign in the distance in Forest Through the Trees, and a couple of crushed empty beer cans in Rainy Daze and Delays. The cans are actually a representation of my favourite beer, Wellington SPA from my hometown of Guelph.

VIEW NEW WORK BY MEL GAUSDEN

David T. Alexander will be part of Audain Art Museum’s new exhibition Stone and Sky: Canada’s Mountain Landscape. 

The special Canada 150 exhibition profiles representations of expansive mountain vistas by the likes of Group of Seven Painters Emily Carr, Lawren Harris plus Takao Tanabe, Ann Kipling and others. 

Alexander's ‘Contrasted Day Drawing’ (pictured) and ‘White heat, Keremeos’ will be on view from November 11 until February 26 at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.

Image details: David T. Alexander, ‘Contrasted Day Drawing', 2008

Vancouver painter Michelle Nguyen was recently interviewed by Portia Priegert of GalleriesWest for her exhibition "Of Tristia, Forlorn!" at Bau-Xi Vancouver. In the article, Michelle cites the wide-ranging influences on her painting practice: from poetry and digital culture to the writing of 20th century art critic John Berger, and even her personal background as a child of Vietnamese refugees.

"One of her favourite paintings is Apparitions in a Crowd. “I’ve always been interested in the macabre, and as a kid, had an active imagination and always worried about monsters and things. I don't know. I guess in some way they are kind of weird Freudian reflections of my unconscious, or something. I don’t think about it too much, to be honest. People are always asking me these questions and I don’t necessarily know how to answer. There’s a reason you choose painting instead of writing – because I don’t know how to express that in an articulate way in the English language.” - Portia Priegert on Michelle Nguyen

"Of Tristia, Forlorn!" is on view at Bau-Xi Vancouver until September 23. See the full Michelle Nguyen collection here.

Read the article on GalleriesWest

1) Is painting a deeply personal process for you? What does painting mean to you?

I think painting for me is a way to process things deeply. To connect to and align with the miracle.  Frederick Franck describes this best in speaking about drawing: 

"It is in order to really see, to see ever deeper, ever more intensely, hence to be fully aware and alive, that I draw what the Chinese call 'The Ten Thousand Things' around me. Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle”. – Frederick Franck

2) You’ve mentioned before that you often work from photographs because it helps ground and stabilize your compositions. From this place you described how you can create movement from “a more intuitive place”. Could you describe in more detail what it is that you attempt to capture?

Capture is an interesting word. At the base of all of my work, from the beginning, is wind: Ruwach - Spirit, breath, wind - which are impossible to capture. I think that's the challenge: how to really express this quality in a painting. Being impossible to capture without ending its life, the trick is to somehow become it and express what that feels like. Seemingly impossible, but fun to try. 

3) We’re excited to hear that Darlene Cole’s work served as an inspiration for these new paintings. What other artists have informed your recent body of work?

Honestly, Darlene is completely blowing my mind with her work. She's the only one I really follow on Instagram and she's it as far as I'm concerned. She paints with such a great mix of confident vulnerability and in such a masterful loose and free way. Her style is so foreign to me and I'm completely in awe of her skills, intuition and heart. 

4) Could you describe your own relationship to gardening, or more broadly, to nature and how it informs your art practice?

When I was a child I spent hours every day in my parents’ gardens. Especially the food garden. When I was young our garden was huge. Peach, pear, plum and cherry trees, raspberries, rhubarb, strawberries and a lot of vegetables. I haven't had my own garden for many years and am looking forward to having one again next year. As far as nature goes, I feel best when I'm outside. I always have. As a kid I slept outside as much as I possibly could. This show was all made while painting outside. I feel disconnected when I'm not outside. When I can't experience shifts in light through the day, changes in barometric pressure, birds singing ...

My work needs to stem from a place of alignment (as opposed to competing or being out of tune) with nature so it informs the work a lot. Nature is the tuning fork. It keeps everything in tune. 

 Sheri Bakes, Feeding Bees, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40 in.


5) Could you speak more about your plein air painting practice? Do you have specific rituals or routines that help ground you?

My dogs actually ground me the most. On breaks from painting we go for walks, hikes or do some training. Their non-verbal companionship grounds me.

In the studio I sometimes listen to the CBC and sometimes music but often it’s just silent. I do find silence grounding, as are the natural sounds of birds, frogs or crickets. While painting for this show, I was surrounded by mourning doves every morning. I found their sounds very soothing and sympathetic to the process of painting.

6) How important is spontaneity in your art?

I’m drawn to the freedom of spontaneity after conceptualizing an idea. It’s a process of letting go and learning as you go. In my first poetry class in university, the instructor introduced us to Theodore Roethke's poem, 'The Waking'. This poem, and his reading of it, completely transformed my mind with respect to process and taught me to "learn by going where I have to go."

7) You seem to have a great interest in the physical world’s process of transformation and renewal - how would you say you respond to the cyclical nature of seasons through your work?

I appreciate the structure that natural cycles provide, kind of like growth rings in a tree. In the larger picture, natural cycles are stabilizing and grounding.

8) How has your work developed in the past few years and how do you see it evolving in the future?

The work has become increasingly abstract and the movement is now often contained within the piece instead of veering out of the top right of the canvas. I seem to be making less small work now and using photos less and less.

I'm interested in the physicality of the paint, and also in saying more with less and moving into a painting practice that is very minimal. I'd like my paintings to become better listeners. I really need the vastness of space and silence. It seems a bit like the world could use more of that, too.

 Sheri Bakes, Rain Oil on Canvas, 52 x 52 in.

Wind Songs opens at Bau-Xi Vancouver on September 9
VIEW MORE ARTWORK FROM SHERI BAKES

Visit Michael Wolf's retrospective, Life in Cities, at the Rencontres d’Arles from July 3 to August 27, 2017. The exhibition will travel to international institutions, including the Fotomuseum Den Haag in January 2018, and will be accompanied by a monograph.

Click here to read more. 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW AVAILABLE MICHAEL WOLF ARTWORK. 

Something Curated has named Joshua Jensen-Nagle in their Top 5 'Must-See Photographers at Photo London 2017'. 

Click image for details

Michael Wolf is who has been featured for his Tokyo Compression series at Flowers Gallery.

Steven Nederveen presenting “Ocean’s Crossing” at the Canadian Consulate in Reykjavik


1) It’s been a busy year for you so far. You recently had the honour of receiving a highly- regarded commission by the Canadian Ambassador for the Canadian Embassy in Reykjavik for Canada’s 150th Anniversary. How was your experience in Iceland?

It was wonderful! The people are very warm and welcoming. The presentations went well and the audience was very keen on my latest work, the abstracts and the sculptures. I had a couple days to travel around and take in their unique landscapes. That was very inspiring. I highly recommend Iceland as a place to visit.

2) One can’t help but observe your careful treatment of the elusive properties of cool, arctic light in your upcoming solo show, Nature Transforms. What is it about light that intrigues you?

I've always been intrigued with the play of light on moving water or its refraction through objects. It has a strange hypnotic quality that enlivens my sense of wonder. Sometimes it puts me into a state of meditation that connects me to my soul, and that is usually followed by a deep sense of connection to the world around me.





3) Emotional memory of place is a theme that you explore and delve deeply in throughout past and present bodies of work. How is this new series informed by your recent trip to Iceland? What was it about Iceland that inspired you to experiment with new materials?

Iceland is a place of stark contrasts with its volcanic underbelly and glacier peaks, and soaring cliffs against black sand beaches. It's a memorable place with lots of distinct experiences but I focused mostly on the glaciers. Seeing giant slabs of ice drifting towards open ocean is really beautiful but also deeply worrying. With icebergs you're seeing ice that's been frozen for eons, marked with sediment deposits from years gone by. They led me to meditate on the expansiveness of nature and time, giving me a sense of awe and wonder. Seeing these singular white monoliths against the dark blue water inspired me to explore the theme of water and ice - it's transformative nature, our impact on it, and also the hypnotic beauty of ice with its transparent depths and sparkling refractions of light. 

In my abstracts, I use an ice-like sheet of acrylic with fractures and clear pockets, to conceal and reveal, manmade markings (ink brushwork). The varying colours reflect the Nordic skies at various times of day or night. 

Detailed shots of Iceberg 1

The sculpture is a result of testing the boundaries of multiple layers of transparency. Through 24 painted sheets of acrylic, a fully 3 dimensional object is created. A stylized iceberg floats in a sea of colour. As the viewer walks around the piece, the iceberg changes from a unified image to a series of disjointed layers and back again to a unified image on the other side. 

Also, Olafur Eliason is one of my favourite artists, he's Danish/Icelandic, and a bunch of his work is in Reykjavik. Seeing it first hand was incredibly inspiring and has single-handedly encouraged me to explore new methods and concepts in my work.

4) How would you say your work has developed in the past few years and how do you see it evolving in the future?

I've spent a lot of time depicting contemplative landscapes and trying to evoke a sense of wonder from nature. They are informed by my own experiences. I love this exploration and how it's developed so far.

I plan to continue on this path while incorporating the viewer into the work more directly.  I can see how the sculptural pieces can lend themselves to large-scale site-specific works, possibly incorporated into architectural interiors. In my new multi-layered abstract pieces, viewers may be reflected in, or revealed and concealed by the various layers as they move around the piece. I hope that my work re-awakens in the viewer a similar experience that perhaps they've had in the past.