Janna Watson | Elementals
Janna Watson | Elementals
February 15 - 27, 2025
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday January 15, 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Elementals, the highly anticipated new solo exhibition from Toronto-based abstract artist Janna Watson.
Ever inspired by nature and literature in its many forms, the artist focuses her new collection specifically on the elements of stone, water and wind, finding a muse in the 20th century Irish poet and author John O’Donoghue (1956-2008) and his moving talk “The Inner Landscape”. Her signature dynamic gestures, captured in paint, suggest the significance of a moment, both in our own lives and in the perpetual life cycle of these elements.
Artist statement:
“The interplay between farmers and the elements is a poem without words. The air could hold the breeze of the rain or the wind of warmth to the discerning nose. The stone carried its memory deep into the hands that chiseled it. Fire was life in the hearth which was the centre of home. Water introduced itself to us from its most natural source in streams and wells. I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” -John O’ Donoghue
John O’Donoghue perfectly paints the sentiment of being immersed in nature and the reciprocity of its spiritual elements, which he eloquently describes as “poems without words”. These paintings express the unspoken language of nature, seemingly spontaneous and inherently connecting our outer and inner landscapes.
For me, it’s in the silence where nature’s generous unfolding invokes an awe of the numinous sentience of the elements.
- Janna Watson, 2025