Exhibitions

Sheri Bakes | Aurora
October 5 - 17, 2024
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday October 5, 2-4pm | Artist in Attendance

Reflecting Bakes' recent viewing of the Northern Lights from her Vancouver Island home, these atmospheric paintings were inspired in part by elements of the science behind the auroras; from there, Bakes aimed to reach beyond the technical rendering of this natural phenomenon to focus on the feeling and emotion that the Lights convey. Bakes’ signature evocation of movement, energy and life-force connects all her paintings.


Artist Statement:

This new body of work explores the Northern Lights from a large Vancouver Island farm. There are a couple of cougar dens in the area where I live so I tend to avoid walking outside at night and in the early morning, but I wanted to see the auroras. 

To see the Northern Lights on the farm means walking through a forested area down a long gravel driveway in complete darkness to a clearing which offers an opening to the night sky. I missed the first night of lights because I was too afraid to take the long dark walk to the clearing. The following nights I mustered the courage and carried a portable high powered industrial light and made it out to the clearing to see the incredibly vibrant colours and dynamic movement of the Northern Lights over the farm. 

Back in the studio, I wondered how I could paint the Northern Lights from the internal feeling of having seen them. In reading about how the lights are created (the sun ejecting charged particles from its upper atmosphere creating the solar wind, and then that wind slamming into the earth’s upper atmosphere), I wanted to explore the colourful movement of charged particles, solar wind and atmosphere in motion.

-Sheri Bakes, 2024

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Sheila Kernan | Interplay: Memory and Connection
August 17-31, 2024
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday August 17, 2-4pm
Artist in Attendance
Artist Talk & Tour August 17 2:15-2:30pm


Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Interplay: Memory and Connection, the new solo exhibition from Calgary-based artist Sheila Kernan. In this series, Kernan continues to explore her fascination with coastal vistas in her signature multi-technique style. New landscapes depict a reverence for British Columbia’s forests, rocky shores and islands, coloured and emphasized through memory and eliciting connection with the viewer through shared experience and emotion. The immersive, textural scenes are replete with the energy of the wild landscape. 


Artist's statement:

Memory is a fluid and subjective phenomenon that is continually shaped by our experiences and emotions. Through my practice, I consistently explore this malleable nature of past recollections and how they evolve over time. I am interested in how the power of perspective can shape and sometimes change our current understanding of what once was.

I value evolution and am always searching for new ways to combine materials and to construct and deconstruct my paintings. This uncertainty of outcome is what keeps things fresh, exciting, and challenging. I seek to reconnect with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery, chasing the rush that accompanies each brushstroke and each new artistic revelation.

My paintings act as a bridge between my personal experiences and memories with nature and the collective human experience with nature. It is this moment of connection that the paintings take on a life of their own, becoming an opportunity for viewers to recall and process their own memories, emotions, and experiences. I am thankful every day for this exchange.

-Sheila Kernan, 2024


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Nicole Katsuras | The Gentle Ground
July 13-27, 2024
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday July 13, 2-4pm

Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents The Gentle Ground, a new solo exhibition by Nicole Katsuras. In this new series, the artist utilizes her signature free-flowing extruded paint application to create spaces of lightness and grounding in which to contemplate the present moment. These lyrical abstractions are the artist's floating worlds, inspired by the definition of Japanese Ukiyo-e.


Artist's Statement:

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
-Abraham Maslow

In this new body of work, I hope to plant new seeds and flowers for new growth, positive energy and new beginnings.

Today, life is filled with never ending to-do-lists and always being “on the go”. It is easy to forget and appreciate the present, no matter how chaotic or simple it may be. These oil paintings are like a Zen garden: places of contemplation, moving sites of reflection and moments of renewal — filled with recurring motifs of maps, floating islands and land forms. Tendrils of extruded oil paint are like pathways to interconnect and ground you to the here and now, allowing yourself to be present and mindful, even at an intersection of activity. To just gently observe and appreciate the moment and the “now” can be liberating, energizing and restorative. These paintings are as much for me as they are for the viewer — the colours and textures of creating pull us into the moment. Embracing and allowing yourself to let go in these moments, I find, is so beneficial.

I have started to experiment with some gouache on small panels - a sort of meditative, simple, repetitive exercise, tiny strokes of colour within organic line forms. I have always done small sketches to map out my compositions within small boxes and rectangles - there is a similar structure with my line work but simpler and more stylized.

– Nicole Katsuras, 2024


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Andre Petterson | Halcyon
April 20-May 4, 2024
Main Level
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday April 20, 2-4pm
Artist In Attendance

Andre Petterson turns his lens onto floral motifs for his new solo exhibition, Halcyon, proudly presented by Bau-Xi Vancouver. This series contrasts riotous, layered superblooms of flowers with the calm and focused refinement of singular blooms in architectural settings. Adding a further sense of calm, the collection includes several coastal landscapes with long pieces of driftwood to emphasize the linearity of the horizon meeting the water’s edge.

In these new works, Petterson embraces chance occurrence, letting paint organically land in unexpected places on the panel and intermingle with the photographed floral elements. The effect both disrupts and harmonizes with these elements, giving Petterson’s signature mixed media style a new sense of looseness as he creates varied and novel ways to experience florals.

Artist statement:

My new work is largely floral, still life and landscape, and is much more painterly than anything I've done in the recent past. It is an exploration and contrast of real and abstract, hard edges and softness, natural and man-made. I have been dabbling with floral and nature works throughout the decades; If I were to make floral works again, I felt I had to bring something new to the subject that I hadn't yet explored. Incorporating architectural elements added a sense of play and, to some degree, a sense of revisiting some of the early collages that I made years ago. I get to build things again.   - Andre Petterson 2024

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Anne Griffiths | The Nature Cure
March 9 - 23, 2024
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday March 9, 2-4pm
Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present The Nature Cure, the anticipated solo exhibition by BC-based artist Anne Griffiths. Griffiths' emotive abstracted landscapes, rendered in a jewel-like palette, reflect the artist's intentional focus on the act of connecting and communing with natural surroundings. The Nature Cure is a timely reminder of our inherent connection to nature and its potential role in maintaining our mental well-being in turbulent times.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As the world becomes an ever-more confusing web of artificial entities and falsehoods, we each struggle to find objective truths and authentic experiences. To me there is nothing more real than the simple act of immersing oneself in nature. It is something consistent that we can hang onto for sanity in this world consumed by ‘alternate facts’ and seemingly endless confrontation.

In this new body of work, I have explored my own reactions to this ‘nature time’. It seems to heal me of stress while time stands still; and there is more beauty to take in than time to absorb it. This grounding in the natural world collides with my angst for the state of our human-centric world. These paintings are the physical and artistic manifestation of that collision.      -Anne Griffiths, 2024

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Joseph Plaskett | Repose
January 13-27, 2024 | EXTENDED through February 1
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 18, 2-4pm

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud and honoured to open 2024 with Repose, a special retrospective solo exhibition from eminent Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett (1918-2014). This collection of oils, pastels and etchings features quietly captivating scenes of interiors and gardens most loved by the artist.

A native of New Westminster, BC, Plaskett studied art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London and Paris. His time in Paris and later years in Suffolk, England (where he passed away in 2014) are the focus of this exhibition, and each work reflects his distinctive mastery of form and composition and a perpetually fresh palette. 

Since the 1940s, Plaskett has had over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with work in major public, private and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada. He has exhibited with Bau-Xi Gallery, both in Vancouver and Toronto, since 1973. In the spring of 2001, he was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art.

Join us and explore the intimate and extraordinary world of one of Canada's greatest artists.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

HOLIDAY | New Works by Gallery Artists
December 9-23, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday December 9, 2-4pm


Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present our annual holiday group exhibition, featuring beautiful new works in the spirit of the season.
The exhibition includes works by Vicky Christou, Eric Louie, Sylvia Tait, Kyle Scheurmann, Cori Creed, Anne Griffiths, Casey McGlynn and more.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION