PLEASE JOIN US IN CELEBRATING THE BAU-XI GALLERY | DUFFERIN INDUSTRY NIGHT!
As one of Canada's most established galleries, Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin offers a blend of elegant ambiance and artistic allure, making it a perfect environment for unforgettable events where creativity and sophistication converge.
Please join us for an exclusive event designed for event planners and industry professionals to experience the magic of our gallery space.
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BAU-XI GALLERY | DUFFERIN INDUSTRY NIGHT IS PROUDLY SPONSORED BY:
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Law & Order Toronto recap: Paint brushes and poisonings
A very Toronto breakdown of episode three, “The Real Eve”
In Toronto’s war on crime, the worst offenders are pursued by the detectives of a specialized criminal investigations unit. Now, some of those investigations are getting the television treatment with Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, a new, super-local and somewhat verbosely titled expansion of the famous franchise, now airing on CityTV.
Though each story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event, many of the cases and places on screen will feel familiar to Canadian true-crime fans. But will they pass muster with the people who know the city best? Each week, we’ll weigh the evidence, consult the experts and issue a verdict on what the show got right and wrong about Toronto, the Canadian legal system and the IRL headlines behind each episode.
Episode three is set against the backdrop of the local gallery scene. “It was so great to see the art world get this kind of treatment—you see a lot of representations of musicians and actors in pop culture, but not many of visual artists,” says Mia Nielsen, the director of Art Toronto and this week’s guest consultant.
This week, a beloved Toronto art professor is stabbed to death in her own office—right when her career is taking off. The broad strokes of episode three sound a lot like the 2001 murder of University of Toronto art prof David Buller, whose violent death (he was stabbed nine times) shocked the city’s culturati. Buller had been working on a new collection at the time of his death, which is also true of his L&O avatar Eve Kinwood, who turns up dead just days before her exhibition.
At the top of the episode, we learn that Eve is represented by Lee Sloane (played by The Handmaid’s Tale’s Amanda Brugel), a gallerist who has come a long way from her “little storefront on Dundas”. Now Lee has a brand new gallery space, and Eve’s latest exhibit is to serve as its grand opening. First, though, Lee gives a lecture at the fictional Ontario Art Academy. Everyone is there: her star client, Eve; Eve’s student-slash-lover, Jasper; and Eve’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Rick, who is going really hard on the free wine. “The idea that you would have an open bar at an art school event is pretty funny,” says Nielsen. “You don’t even get that at most gallery openings these days”.
Rick getting absolutely blotto, though? That rings a little more true. The guy’s got plenty of reasons to reach for the bottle, what with his own career stalling while his ex is the toast of the town. Eve tells Rick that maybe he would have better luck if he produced more work. “I loved when she said that,” says Nielsen. “Rick feels like this classic cliché of the bitter older artist who would rather be pissed off than focus on his own creative output”. But is he bitter enough to commit murder? That’s the question he has to ask himself when he wakes up in Eve’s office, a few feet away from her body, holding a blood-soaked intaglio printing tool with zero recollection of the past eight hours.
The name Ontario Art Academy screams OCAD reference, but the campus scenes were filmed at U of T Mississauga—which, as we know, is not what an art college looks like.
Graff and Bateman analyze the crime scene and determine that the victim knew her killer, which was what happened in the Buller case. Real-life suspects back in 2001 included a former student and an ex—check and check. The key difference is that, more than twenty years later, Buller’s murder remains unsolved. The lead investigators (including former police chief and bike-lane antagonist Mark Saunders) interviewed over 200 people in connection with the case, which is a great example of how tedious an actual investigation can be. For the TV version, Graff and Bateman do considerably less legwork.
Before her death, Eve had recently received the Poletto Award—a huge deal in the fictional Toronto art world. “I guess the Poletto is supposed to be the Sobey, which is Canada’s top art prize. It’s a big deal, but there is no trophy,” Nielsen says. And if there were, it definitely wouldn’t look like a melted bong.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who has been watching this series, Graff is an expert in both art criticism and painting technique. This week, he gives us a poignant mini lecture on Eve’s brush strokes, which are more intense than ever in her recent work. Believe it or not, our man is not far off the mark. The paintings, Nielsen says, are the work of Toronto’s own Janna Watson, an abstract painter known for her brushwork. “It was great that they used real art and put Janna’s work on display,” says Nielsen. And of course, art created by a legitimately decorated artist (and not a prop intern) lends a lot of credibility.
Lee’s star client may be dead, but the show must go on: she still has her fancy new art gallery to open—a palatial two-storey space that looks like someone took a white paint gun to a WeWork. “I laughed when I saw this because the size is just not what you would typically see in Toronto these days,” says Nielsen. However, it is in fact a real gallery—the new Bau-Xi Gallery on Dufferin.
A Toronto gallerist is only as good as her collection of power suits, so of course Lee wears an Aviator jumpsuit by Horses Atelier. Her assistant, Callie, is also nailing the wardrobe with a chain mail T-shirt that she obviously wore to the Comfort Zone last night.
When Graff and Bateman ask to see Eve’s personal studio, they learn that its location is a secret. Nobody knows where it is—not even her gallerist. “There is just no way,” says Nielsen. “Visiting the artists you represent at their studios is part of an art dealer’s job”. Brooding boy toy Jasper reveals that Eve used to paint in an auto body shop when she was a kid. So maybe she works out of Jimmie’s Garage, Graff posits (which would explain the conspicuous zoom-in on the Jimmie’s Garage keychain during an earlier scene in Eve’s office).
When they arrive at Eve’s workspace, our dynamic duo find her most recent work, but—wait!—the paint is still wet. “Unless she’s back from the dead, Eve’s a fraud,” says Bateman. Well, not necessarily. “Eve’s paintings are done in oils, which can take weeks and even months to fully dry,” Nielsen explains.
Points for Bateman’s spot-on Graff impersonation as she pokes fun at her partner’s endless knowledge about the art world. He may be a pompous blowhard, but he’s her pompous blowhard.
If Eve didn’t create her work, who did? That would be Nikki, an undiscovered talent who took art therapy sessions with Eve at a CAMH equivalent. Props to the no-nonsense social worker who responds to Graff’s request for her client’s last name with “It’s spelled, Get a warrant”.
Flash forward to Nikki’s one-bedroom apartment on Carlaw, where we see her painting in a Klaxon Howl T-shirt (Toronto designer) while listening to Caitlin Woelfle-O’Brien (Toronto musician). “This is a much more realistic portrayal of the kind of spaces most artists work in,” says Nielsen. “Twenty years ago, you had affordable studio space—today we call those condos”.
It turns out that Eve was paying for Nikki’s rent and groceries (and maybe her fancy T-shirts) in exchange for her art, which she then passed off as her own. This sort of art world fraud is rare, says Nielsen, but it does happen. Just last month, an art teacher in a Montreal high school was accused of selling his student’s artwork without their knowledge. As for a Toronto artist (even one with a Poletto) having the funds to float another person’s living expenses? “I kept waiting to hear that one of Eve’s parents was the head of TD Bank,” Nielsen says.
By the time Graff and Bateman find Nikki, she’s dead. At first it looks like an overdose, but we soon learn that she’s been pumped full of zolpidem (a.k.a. Ambien) by someone else. The bodies are piling up now, and our team is zeroing in on a certain well-suited gallery owner who is absolutely not going to serve sushi at her big opening bash. (“It stays out for too long,” Lee tells Callie). So what should be served? “Find out what MOCA did for their last event,” she says. It’s a great shout-out to a Toronto gallery, but again, the days of moneyed art events are over. “You’re lucky to get sweaty cheese cubes,” Nielsen says.
“Eve is gone, but her art will live on,” Lee tells a wealthy prospective buyer with empty wall space at her home in Prince Edward County. But would the work really be on sale this quickly? Definitely not, according to Nielsen, who says that no decent gallerist would be turning a star client’s death into a fire sale. “Given Eve’s profile, Lee should be calling the National Gallery to see about having a painting in their collection or maybe talking about a touring exhibition”.
But, of course, Lee is not a decent gallerist—she’s a self-serving sociopath who committed a “calculated, premeditated murder” to keep Eve’s fraud a secret. In a dramatic monologue, Graff explains how Eve and Nikki had joined forces and planned to come clean at the big opening. They had even made an art film together: “a statement on the irony of raw talent being subsumed by middle-class greed, ambition and fear of irrelevance.” As is his way, Graff prods a confession out of Lee, who is then handcuffed and escorted out of the gallery. Meanwhile, Bateman reveals the real origin of the paintings to the ritzy opening-night attendees.
Nielsen wonders why Lee decided to go the murderess route in the first place. “Selling art is all about narratives and storytelling, and this is a good story.” Alternate ending: Lee finds out about the forgeries and quickly signs Nikki while also securing the film rights. “That seems like the smarter move here,” says Nielsen. “But I guess it’s Law & Order, so you need a body.” Fair enough.
FINAL VERDICT
Accuracy score: +12
Judge’s notes: The juiciest episode yet puts the spotlight on the city’s creative community. If only they’d had a consultant for paint-drying timelines.
Best Toronto cameo: The guy hanging Eve’s art in the gallery scene is actual Bau-Xi art dealer Kyle Matuzewiski.
Worst Toronto cameo: The city’s cadre of put-upon assistants as repped by Callie, who covers up for Lee when she claims she’s too drunk to drive.
Most meme-worthy line: “I never liked art dealers.”
Anne Griffiths, The Nature Cure. Oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches.
Lush and overgrown, Anne Griffiths’ paintings are the forest. Freshly harvested from temperate groves on Vancouver Island, her newest work cultivates the last remaining strands of what we remember as ‘nature,’ transforming landscape into thick, tranquil, terrestrial paintings; more earth than oil.
I look at Anne’s paintings as though we’re walking through the understory together. Tangled, velvet vines and moonglade in every direction. Dewed branches dangling overhead. Cerulean shimmers bursting through the canopy. These are paintings to see in person, just as much objects as they are images. Each one a teleportation device to a dense woodland far from the gallery walls.
Because Anne drapes paint on linen like moss drapes on a nurse-log. Whether dragged by an oil stick across the tooth or pressed deep into the fibre by a soaked and worn brush, these are marks made by somebody who’s learned to harness the healing power of the forest. Constantly in the moment of becoming, the paint is growth and decay at the same time. The land in Anne’s paintings is forever suspended in a moment of regeneration, continually resolving itself for the viewer. In an age of artificial stimulation and anecdotal authenticity, we could all benefit from a holistic medicinal harvest. Something perennial and tilled. Something unplugged and embodied. Something we all inherently know the value of but no longer know how to empower.
Saturated in an ailing ecosystem, it’s easy to lose track of our own wellbeing. Which makes this exhibition so crucial…
Fertile and flourishing, somber and sublime - Anne’s paintings are the antidote.
-Kyle Scheurmann, 2024
The artist in her studio.
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Michelle Nguyen, Water Feature (Wailing Venus). Oil on canvas, 49 x 36 inches.
On the Omission of the Face
“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.
Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.
The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“The notion of human faces as recognizable, categorizable, and distinct from other kinds of faces first emerged as a scientific conception in Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)…For many, the face is the basis for sympathy; morality enhanced by face to face interaction…The face shocks us into recognizing our stark difference from and our profound responsibility to one another.”
— Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces
“Studies have shown that the average person correctly assesses another person’s expressions (thinking, agreeing, confused, concentrating, interested, disagreeing) only 54% of the time. Despite the belief that a face is clearer than a word, there’s more variation in what facial expressions mean across culture, gender, and individuals than we might imagine.”
— Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces
“In fact, it [the self] was barely even a concept at all until about the seventeenth century, when languages such as English and German began to use the word “self” as something other than an intensifier (as in “I did it myself”). Then, as we shall see in later chapters, the “self” began to replace the “soul” as a special kind of kernel within each individual, walled off in part from everyone else. Attention turned inward, as people were encouraged to know themselves through, for example, the widespread use of mirrors, the writing of journals and autobiographies, and the painting of portraits, often self-portraits. “Western individualism” was born, along with, eventually, psychoanalysis and any number of afflictions of the self.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes
Michelle Nguyen, Alter For Hungry Ghosts. Oil on canvas, 72 x 42 inches.
On Death and Grief
Altar for Hungry Ghosts is influenced by the Buddhist altars that can be found in many Vietnamese households. Though varied in size and display, most of these altars contain similar elements such as photos of deceased family members, candles, incense, and edible offerings such as fruit.
The last time I was home, I found my late paternal grandmother’s dentures placed upon our home altar. My father had found them while cleaning up. He did not know what to do with them, and settled for placing them there in their white plastic case next to her photo. My grandmother was cremated and her ashes have long been strewn, so there is this odd feeling of knowing that her body has been long gone but this very intimate casting of the inside of her mouth still exists. In that way, her dentures feel like an unintentional death mask.
My personal memories of my grandmother are intertwined with memories of us spending them outside together underneath the cherry tree in our backyard. I very much associate her with the dusting of pink petals drifting in a swirl of confetti in the springtime and eating cherries right off the branches in the summer. The altar in loaded with many of her favourite foods and meals that I recall sharing with her. Additionally, on one’s birthday, upon cutting the cake, it is customary to serve the first piece to the eldest in the family, often the patriarch or matriarch.
It has almost been eighteen years since my grandmother passed away, and though time has aided in numbing that pain, it is still very much present in our household. My father is a very stoic and quiet man, so to see these rare moments of vulnerability of his is very meaningful to me. My father’s act of putting the dentures on the family altar also spoke to (for me at least) how there is no right way to mourn. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s most well-known work, The Five Stages of Grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance), have actually been greatly oversimplified since its conception. These stages actually do not have to happen in order and can be repeated a multitude of times. Grief is a part of every human experience and I want to encourage others to engage in it more.
You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
— Anne Carson, The Glass Essay
“When people hear the term “grief,” they frequently think about concrete loss and trauma—a break up, a departure, a death…Something must have already happened to illicit grief, and that event must have taken place in the past. However, when looking at the origins of the term “grief”—from the Latin gravare, to burden—we can see that there is no reference to time or to a cause at all. To grieve is simply to feel weighed down, to be made heavy, to experience mental suffering and deep sorrow.”
— Breeshia Wade, Grieving While Black
“When we fail to recognize the grief inherent in so many of our other emotions, we fail to engage honestly with our experience. Our lives are full of griefs, full of losses big and small, and every loss is a spiritual death. Neglecting that grief leads to spiritual decay, a rotting that attempts to plug its own holes with the wholeness of others. Too many of us are driven by grief rather than informed by it, allowing our fear of impermanence and powerlessness to justify our brutish disempowerment of others.”
— Breeshia Wade, Grieving While Black
“It’s imperative that each of us starts attending to our own grief, not to the exclusion of, but for the sake of, the world. Although the consequences of stifled grief tend to flow downhill from social power, we all have a lot to grieve, and we are each capable of causing tremendous suffering as a result of our relationship to fear of loss. The type of work required from each of us must extend beyond self-care, therapy, and relaxation. It must involve deliberate internal exploration of our deepest fears and desires.
Grief can either be used as a tool to bring us closer to ourselves, and thus to each other, or it can tear us apart.”
— Breeshia Wade, Grieving While Black
“You can think of death bitterly or with resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible measure to postpone it. Or, most realistically, you can think of life as an interruption of an eternity of personal nonexistence, and seize it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with the living, ever-surprising world around us.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes
Michelle Nguyen, Shape Shifter. Oil on canvas, 57 x 72 inches.
On Metamorphosis and Shapeshifting
I’ve always had a fascination with insects since a young age because of how different their existence seemed in comparison to mine. I remember spending my time after rainstorms walking around scooping up worms from the concrete and placing them back in the soil so they wouldn’t get trampled. I had learned that worms had five hearts and I could not imagine the pain they were capable of feeling. I had only one and I felt so deeply; I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel with five hearts.
In a 2014 episode of Radiolab entitled “Goo and You,” producer Molly Webster looks into the change a caterpillar goes through within the pupal stage, how they basically become a soup of stem cells and reassemble themselves into that of a butterfly. A 2008 study by Douglas J. Blackiston et al. found that caterpillars retained their memories through their metamorphosis. They trained tobacco hornworm caterpillars to associate a particular odour with that of pain (a mild electric shock) and found that they would actively avoid the smell as moths.
Transformation myths such as that of the werewolf and ones in Greco-Roman mythology can easily be compared to the drastic transformation of many insects.
Additionally, I am interested in the subjectivity of the term “pest” and how which creatures are considered pests hinges solely on how human perceptions and beliefs change over time. For example, in Bethany Brookshire’s Pest, she notes that rats and mice were considered symbols of prosperity in early developments of agriculture. To have rodents meant that you had food, you had wealth. Whereas today, rodents are often associated with filth and the poor. Two mice can be seen on either side of the table in Altar for Hungry Ghosts.
In my painting practice I often paint over old works, partly for practical reasons (not wanting to spend money on more canvas and stretchers). Three of the paintings in this body of work are pieces that have been painted over. Shapeshifter (2023) was previously Succubi Feeding (2019), Altar for Hungry Ghosts (2023) was Soft Suits II (2019), and Smokescreen (2023) was Kindle (2019). I would compare these pieces to palimpsests.
Just because something is not shown on its surface or no longer has a physical presence does not mean it wasn’t important and served a purpose. The blank canvas and the self-made person is a myth. Context is everything.
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler, The Parable of the Sower
“I’m lumpy and porous, I’m an animal, I hurt sometimes, and I’m different one day to the next. I hear, see, and smell things in a world where others also hear, see, and smell me. And it takes a break to remember that: a break to do nothing, to just listen, to remember, in the deepest sense what, when, and where we are.”
— Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing
“Every day, we witness and experience both birth and death in a variety of contexts. We experience the loss of our parents on multiple levels, from witnessing the disappointment in their shortcomings to simply watching old age transform them into people we barely recognize—and from that loss, new insights and possibilities emerge. With each moment, the person who we are is dying to make room for the person we are becoming.”
— Breeshia Wade, Grieving While Black
Michelle Nguyen, Smokescreen. Oil on canvas, 15 x 17 inches.
On Climate Change
I have thought about the paintings Smokescreen and Flooded Fountain and think they are apt reflections on the grief that accommodates our growing climate crisis. The guardian stone lions/foo dogs are seen as protectors and are often placed outside of palaces, tombs, and places of worship, much like the motif of the gorgoneion in Greco-Roman culture. In this case, they can no longer offer protection. Objects people have built to stand the tests of time deteriorate. Flooding and forest fires have become a frequent reoccurrence in British Columbia, especially in the last few years. Heavy rainstorms in the winter have washed away entire stretches of road, and wildfires in the summertime are impossible to ignore when the smell of singe and smoke roll in with the frequent change of the winds.
On Cockfighting
I have always felt an attachment to the rooster, being that it is the year I was born in, and a childhood activity my father partook in. My interest was further piqued upon learning that the chicken’s early ancestor, the jungle fowl, was originally domesticated for cockfighting as opposed to sustenance.
The birds were treated as sacred creatures throughout many early human societies, admired for their fighting prowess. “Archeologists have found people being buried with the remnants of chickens, rather than discarded as scraps…Because the birds were buried with humans, it suggested that they had a cultural or social significance…which means that a desire for meat did not drive the domestication of the chicken” (Smithsonian Magazine 2022).
In Clifford Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes of the Balinese Cockfight (1976),” the American anthropologist notes that before the invasion of the Dutch in 1908, cockfighting was seen as a “compulsory duty of citizenship”. Cock rings were found in the centre of the village, where the council house, temple, and marketplace were also located. The events itself were subjected to taxation and served as a major source of public revenue.
Cockfighting was only declared illegal while Bali was under Dutch rule, for it was seen as a “pretension to puritanism and radical nationalism (Geertz 1976).” Only then did this idea of it being “primitive”, backward”, and “unprogressive” (Ibid.) take shape. It is more than just pure bloodshed; there is actually a great deal of nuance to cockfighting. The men who raise these cocks put a lot of tender love and care into their upbringing. The birds are fed specialized diets and are washed in a holy bath of anti-inflammatory qualities. The birds are also taken out for exercise the same way one would with a pet dog. A common practice is for men to gently clasp the birds in-between their legs while squatting, using their hands to stretch and contract the birds’ legs like a human elliptical to strengthen them.
Though different breeds of roosters have different levels of aggression, they usually begin to show their willingness to fight at sixteen to twenty four weeks, which would also be the earliest some of these cocks will find themselves in the fighting ring. In comparison, most commercial broiler hens are slaughtered at six to eight weeks of age. I am not here to defend one act of cruelty to another, but one could argue that, despite the blatant bloodshed and violence these fighting cocks are subjected to, the length and quality of their lives are much more preferable than to that of the broilers we kill just for meat; they often live stressful lives in overcrowded barns with limited sunlight, and poor air and water quality. Compared to broilers, roosters bred to fight are pampered lavishly.
My father dabbled in cockfighting as a boy. He recalls tenderly wrapping his bird in a blanket at night while it slept to help it conserve its energy. He loved the bird and was saddened when it died in battle. There is a queerness to cockfighting that I initially was not expecting to find in a bloodsport primarily dominated by men—a tenderness and level of care that challenges one’s perception of gender and masculinity.
Michelle Nguyen, Amuse Bouche. Oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches.
On Food
I mentioned in our talk that food is important to me personally as well as to my family and to the culture I grew up in. Paintings I create where food serves as a central subject serve a similar purpose to Dutch vanitas, a memento mori—a reminder to the audience of the ephemeral nature of everything. Additionally, the food set on these tables and altars are ammunition for political fodder.
Upon first look, having a cob of corn, a head of cabbage, and a slice of Emmental cheese gracing the same table looks mundane, but their shared space is quite remarkable, made possible due to the history of colonialism and globalization.
The food items I choose are often chosen for their colour and contrast, as well as things I have recently eaten or am craving. I enjoy allowing a certain level of impulse and daily disposition to have a role in the work. With regards to Vanitas and Altars for Hungry Ghosts, I looked into the origins of the different plants and produce after they were finished. I don’t usually go into production for a piece with a particular message in mind; it is something I weave together afterwards upon reflecting back on the process of making the work.
Lastly, I just wanted to note the significance of the lotus flower, which is the national flower of Vietnam. It is symbolic of rebirth because it grows and rises from muddy waters to bloom and returns to the same depths once withered to sow its seeds and continue the cycle. They are also sometimes used in wastewater treatment to remove certain polluted compounds and heavy metals.
Michelle Nguyen, Vanitas. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.
On Creating
Maybe the desire to make something
beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside
each of us.
—Mary Oliver, “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”
The artist in her former Vancouver studio.
]]>Janna Watson solo exhibition Poems continues until February 24 at Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver (3045 Granville Street).
]]>"Fine art photographer Barbara Cole is known for her artistic underwater photography. But when the temperatures in her native Canada dip low enough that her pool is unusable for this type of photoshoot, she needs to pivot. This is where her series Shadow Dancing was born. This ongoing series of wet collodion photographs marries Cole's modern vision with a turn-of-the-century technique."
]]>Canadian photographer Barbara Cole is featured on My Modern Met, a blog spotlighting the best artists who are on the pulse of contemporary art.
"Fine art photographer Barbara Cole is known for her artistic underwater photography. But when the temperatures in her native Canada dip low enough that her pool is unusable for this type of photoshoot, she needs to pivot. This is where her series Shadow Dancing was born. This ongoing series of wet collodion photographs marries Cole's modern vision with a turn-of-the-century technique.
"The wet collodion allows Cole to produce the hazy, dreamlike qualities of her underwater photography, all while in the comfort of her home. While we typically think of wet collodion as a black-and-white process, Cole gives things a contemporary twist by adding color to the tintype. After working with wet collodion for a decade, Cole has an even deeper appreciation for the manual process and the technical skill that it requires.
"Working with wet collodion ambrotypes is as close as photography gets to making a painting in my mind,” she tells My Modern Met. 'There is a great deal of prep work just to get the materials ready to receive the image. You are cutting and cleaning glass, preparing the chemistry, slowly working on one picture at a time, and, in the end, choosing the image and protecting it with a varnish. I love that the picture can only happen if you’ve put in all of this work. This is a far cry from working with the automatic imagery we get from digital files and cell phone images.'
"In Shadow Dancing, we see different models swathed in elegant dresses. Given the nature of wet collodion, at first glance the photographs appear vintage. But upon closer inspection, it's clear that that's not the case. Cole expertly plays with light and shadow in the series. This allows the viewer to enjoy the work on several levels. First, for the models, their beautiful features and poses. Then, for the shapes and forms that their bodies create as shadows are cast along the walls and floors.
"While Cole believes that it's up to each viewer to read into the image in their own way, her goal is to create work that sparks the imagination. 'I hope that viewers stay with these images and attempt to unpack the little stories that these moments in time tell. I hope people will ask questions about the place and emotions and the small situations that are unfolding in these pictures.'"
CLICK HERE to read the full article
Text by Jessica Stewart
Watch this short video to gain more insight into Barbara Cole's creative process and love for this vintage photography process.
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Janna Watson Poems opens on Saturday February 10, 2024 at Bau-Xi Vancouver. The artist will be in attendance.
Janna Watson, Silence Happens Inside Words. Mixed Media on Panel, 60 x 56 inches.
1. You open your artist statement for this new series with a beautiful quote from Canadian poet and professor Anne Carson: “Language is not a tool we have, it is a shapeshifter, a being that lives with us, walks and talks with us and has its own business and intentions.” Can you tell us about your discovery of her writing and how you have applied it to your work?
Anne Carson is one of my favourite poets. She has translated Greek tragedies with witty, ironic brilliance in a way that made me fall in love with words. Being inside the mental activity of translation is a stimulating creative exercise for me. I often feel the English language falls short of emotions that other languages can expand on. So in this way Anne Carson has inspired me to play with my titles and present them as a poetic entry point to my work.
Janna Watson, Never Underestimate A Comma. Mixed Media on Panel, 72 x 72 inches.
2. Can you describe what your current studio workspace looks and feels like? What aspects of it are important to your ability to create?
I work from two different studios. The mental and physical differences between these spaces has helped me to see my work with fresh eyes. Sometimes leaving the studio is just as important as coming, so having the two spaces helps me to leave one and enter another and continue my productivity. I’m a hot mess at the moment so there are lids and splats and mineral water bottles scattered everywhere. I always start my show with a clean and organized space so I can think and see clearly. If I’m in chaos for too long it shows up in my work. I’ve just finished my Vancouver show so I’m very much in the mess of that. Sometimes when I am at an opening I feel shocked because I haven’t "seen" the work before. "Did I paint that?" In my studio I am very much inside of it and part of it and it takes an exhibition space for me to really see it.
Janna Watson, Warm Sleeves Of You. Mixed Media on Panel, 48 x 36 inches.
3. Can you tell us about the mixed media you use in your paintings, and the importance of each medium?
I learned to paint on watercolour paper, and birch wood is very similar in texture to paper so it's my choice of base material. I shouldn’t give my secrets away but gouache is extremely pigmented and can’t be applied too thick because it's chalk based, otherwise it will crack.
4. The public has grown to eagerly anticipate both the elegance and serenity of your compositions and the unabashed playfulness of your titles. How did elegance, serenity and playfulness evolve and come together as hallmarks of your work?
This is a very flattering question! I think the elegance, serenity and playfulness came together in the month of October. Since I’m a Libra, I will unabashedly admit that is why my work has all of these flattering attributes.
The artist in her studio.
]]>Joseph Plaskett, Lily, Red Dahlia, White Rose. Oil on canvas, 26.25 X 37.75 inches.
From solo exhibition A Selection of Pastels
July, 1977
I feel that I have been through the "Modern Art" thing and have come out the other side, having absorbed only what fits me and thrown off what doesn't, so that I am content in the end to make a personal statement, without complications.
From solo exhibition Inside Out
August, 1978
Art finds ordered solutions for disordered living. The artist steps out of the frustrating confusions of the world into the free air of the white canvas, and there he finds order and clarification. Instead of looking in every direction at once and accepting every experience Mid encounter indiscriminately (this particular artist's vice), he narrows his vision down to a window; not even one that opens on a distant horizon, but one whose perspective is blocked by a facade not fifteen feet away, albeit he can see through windows in this facade to other windows and so through to a courtyard. This is the sole window of his "space" where his whole life takes place, where food and drink impose their daily rituals, where friends and others come, and stay, and go, where plants grow and flowers have their passage, where music is made, and where the sacred deity "Puss" demands constant veneration. This is not a studio where the artist retires; it is more like a club, a resort, a public place. The artist seems to thrive on this hubbub of life flowing constantly around, the outside coming in, and the inside going out.
Joseph Plaskett, The Ash Tree. Oil on linen, 118.5 X 93.5 inches.
From solo exhibition New Subjects, New Forms
July, 2006
Much of my work in the past has been inspired by whatever my eye chanced to fall on in the spaces where I work - the disarray on a table after a meal, or sunlight illuminating the furnishings of interior space, or plants, flowers and fruits that accumulate in pots, vases and bowls - all these in innumerable juxtapositions. But the new work exhibited here has often concentrated on objects isolated from the former abundance of forms.
I have in my possession a very large green glass vase, which over a period of a year never ceased to excite my spirit of invention. It was midwinter. The sun [was] very low on the horizon so that it penetrated far into the studio, casting shadows on the floor and higher on the table where stood the green glass vase holding fading chrysanthemums, the vase surrounded by apples from my orchard field, green at first, then turning golden yellow. These shadows, translated into colour, made abstract patterns new to my palette.
As season followed season, the challenge to pictorial invention seemed inexhaustible. In my studio are three octagonal tables whose complex shapes kept recurring, adding new dimensions to space. But the large rectangular table was also constantly in use, though I took pleasure in turning it into a circular table, or else eliminating it altogether so that the still life objects existed in a single surrounding colour.
In the very latest paintings something strange began to happen. When I made a change of colour, usually to a background space, I left a rim of the preceding colour. This aura, or auriole surrounding forms, introduced a new lightness, a marrying of form to background space and a breathing pulsation hinting at ambiguity.
Joseph Plaskett, Still Life With White Amaryllis. Oil on canvas, 40 X 27.5 inches.
From solo exhibition New Challenges
May, 2010
In more youthful days I was constantly travelling, being confronted by new subject matter. Yet my primary inspiration always existed in the interior space where I worked. There I always easily found inspiration in seeing new subject matter, for the world I lived in was not static. New people entered my life. I had new things to say about the human condition. My inspiration came also from the environment that chance had furnished me with, first with Madame Frere's sumptuous salon, then with the semi-medieval aspect of the environment I created around me in the house on rue Pecquay in the Marais and finally after my retreat to my country residence in Suffolk, a whole new vocabulary was added to the language I used.
The visible world is so rich in material to inspire, that in the end the artist has to retreat into an intimate, personal figuration. Several years ago I found inspiration in a bulrush that grew in my pond. Since then I have been spectacularly inspired by vegetables, and for some reason the cabbage seems to have awakened my creativity the most. Fifty years ago I gave an exhibition in Vancouver based on vegetables. In my old age I return to this theme.
-Joseph Plaskett
Joseph Plaskett.
]]>Canadian artist and activist Kyle Scheurmann is featured on the latest episode of Artalogue, a new podcast exploring careers in art.
EPISODE DESCRIPTION:
Image from Iris van Herpen of Sculpting the Senses exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs.
Kim Keever collaborated with world-renowned designer Iris van Herpen to create three couture looks in her Spring 2019 collection, Shift Souls. Now a retrospective exhibition at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Sculpting the Senses pays tribute to the forward-thinking designs by van Herpen fabricated with the imagery of Keever's artwork and other contemporary artists.
"For a joint art project with Kim Keever, Iris van Herpen has made human bodies float weightlessly, cradled by the colours of the cosmos, adorned with the vibrant hues of nebulae. Bodies lose their bearings and go floating off into infinity. Unhindered by frontiers or limits, her garments stretch, become diaphanous and silky, and unfold in dazzling chromatic ranges. Iris van Herpen's universe becomes a poetic explosion of vibrant pigments" - Mad Paris.
In this cross-disciplinary exhibition, van Herpen's ability to push conventional norms of fashion is brought to light. Art, fashion, science, technology, and architecture are intertwined to create an immersive and exploratory body of work.
From Mad Paris "ranging from micro to macro, the exhibition questions the place of the body in space, its relationship to clothing and its environment, and its future in a rapidly changing world."
The exhibition ends with a presentation of van Herpen's works from floor to ceiling. Her designs immerse you in a cosmos-like universe and the photographic artworks of artist Kim Keever allow you to experience this world in all its entirety.
You can view the retrospective from November 29, 2023, to April 28, 2024, at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Kim Keever's artwork is on display in Rooms 11-12 - Voyage Cosmique.
Iris van Herpen Fashioning The Future Exhibition Dates:
Paris, France: 11/29/2023-4/24/2024
Brisbane, Australia: 5/24-10/2024
Singapore: Spring 2025
Rotterdam, Netherlands - TBD
USA - TBD
]]>Bau-Xi Gallery is excited to share an interview with Jeffrey Milstein for his award-winning project for the Creative Communication Award. Read the full interview by C2A below!
About the Project: Los Angeles Theme Parks
Jeffrey Milstein’s award-winning project takes us on a breathtaking journey above the iconic Disneyland and Universal Studios theme parks in Los Angeles, California. Through his lens, he captures the magic, joy, and diversity of these enchanting spaces where people of all backgrounds come together to experience wonder. The aerial perspective adds a layer of artistry, showcasing the parks in a way that invites viewers to see them with fresh eyes.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JEFFREY MILSTEIN
1. Fresh from your recent win at the C2A Awards, can you share how the recognition has already influenced your perspective on your creative journey or business endeavors?
Jeffrey Milstein: We send it out to our galleries who post on their media.
2. Let’s rewind to your journey through the submission and evaluation process for the C2A Awards. What were the standout moments, challenges, or surprises you encountered?
Jeffrey Milstein: No challenges. It went easily.
3. Creativity is a mystic force. What fuels your imagination, and how do you approach the creative process?
Jeffrey Milstein: I often get ideas from dreams. My process combines intuition, artistic evaluation, equipment integration, and logistics.
4. Navigating the twists and turns of a creative career often involves overcoming obstacles. What are some challenges you’ve faced, and how have you tackled them?
Jeffrey Milstein: Shooting aerials is always more complicated than ground-based photography. First, I have to find helicopter charters with pilots willing to make the steep turns I require for my iconic straight down images. Scheduling is always a problem because you can’t know the weather far enough in advance so bookings get complicated. Permissions have to be secured from the local aviation authorities. Often there are conflicts with air traffic going in and out of nearby airports so I can’t always get where I want to be in cities.
5. The ink on your C2A victory is still fresh. In what ways do you anticipate the award impacting your credibility and reputation in the creative industry, and how do you envision leveraging this recognition as you move forward?
Jeffrey Milstein: It’s always nice to share an award from C2A with my galleries and peers. It enhances my reputation.
6. Networking and collaboration are integral to growth. Have you already seen opportunities or partnerships emerge as a result of your C2A win, and how do you foresee these connections shaping your future in the industry?
Jeffrey Milstein: I think it helps, but in many small ways rather than any one big thing I know about.
7. Immediate effects aside, do you foresee winning the C2A Award influencing the demand for your services or products in the near future?
Jeffrey Milstein: Every good publicity item helps.
8. As a recent C2A Award winner, what aspects of the experience have you found most valuable, and would you encourage others in the creative industry to consider participating?
Jeffrey Milstein: It’s a well-respected magazine, so it’s nice to be featured. Anyone wanting to share recent work they are proud of should enter.
9. Looking ahead, do you see yourself applying for the next edition of the C2A Awards, and what aspects of the competition would motivate you to participate again?
Jeffrey Milstein: Yes. The high quality of the winners.
10. Staying current is an ongoing challenge. How do you currently keep abreast of new industry trends, and are there any emerging trends you’re excited to incorporate into your work?
Jeffrey Milstein: Looking at design magazines is a good way to stay current.
11. Future gazing: what plans and aspirations are on the horizon for you, and how do you anticipate your creative journey evolving over time?
Jeffrey Milstein: I have a book of London aerials coming out in April: “London From the Air, Rizzoli.” You can pre-order it now from the usual book sellers.
12. Zooming in on your recent triumph, what inspired the winning project you submitted to the C2A Awards?
Jeffrey Milstein: I have always loved amusement parks and county fairs and such. I have been photographing places like Coney Island, Disneyland, and Universal Studios both in LA and Orlando for some years. I like that they are places where all types and economic stratum of people mingle.
Soaring to New Heights with Jeffrey Milstein
As we conclude this exclusive interview with Jeffrey, the magic of his aerial photography resonates. His recent triumph at the C2A Awards not only highlights his exceptional talent but also propels him to new heights in the creative industry. As Jeffrey continues to capture the world from above, his vision and artistry promise to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide.
Here’s to more breathtaking journeys with Jeffrey Milstein!
]]>After 11 years, Cole has perfected the wet collodion process, and she continues to enjoy creating art through photography.
"It's almost like making a sculpture," she said. "It's so tactile. I loved it. I loved the feeling of working with the photographs with my hands rather than clicking a shutter. That felt way too mechanical."
]]>Photography was an "accidental" interest for Barbara Cole, a Canadian artist who is exhibiting her work at the Holden Luntz Gallery in Palm Beach.
A former model who worked as a fashion reporter for a Toronto newspaper, she switched gears after developing a passion for photography.
"I worked as a fashion writer," said Cole, whose works are included in the exhibition, "Pictures in the Half-Light," which will be on view through Dec. 9. "Ten years later, I left as a photographer to open my own fashion studio."
"Pictures in the Half-Light" showcases Cole's work from her series of wet collodion and underwater photographs.
Cole is particularly proud of her wet collodion work, which she first began producing more than a decade ago.
Wet collodion is a 19th century-era photography process that requires photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes.
It is a labor-intensive process, Cole said, as photographers must cut a piece of glass or metal plate; coat it evenly with a syrupy substance called collodion; make it light-sensitive by dipping it in silver nitrate for a few minutes; load the wet plate into a dark slide which is inserted into the camera; take a picture; and then develop it.
If it's done right, Cole said, the wet collodion process can create very detailed, beautiful photos, but it often takes time to perfect.
"You have to be an artist and a chemist," she said. "If you get all the chemistry wrong, you can't get a beautiful picture. You can get an OK picture, but with stains on it. It's not very well-exposed. It's quite a challenge, but I love that about it."
Cole, who has run Barbara Cole Photography in Toronto for more than 40 years and recently published a book of her work, began experimenting with wet collodion photography after growing frustrated with modern photo technology.
"Everyone thinks they're a photographer," she said. "Anyone with an iPhone snaps a picture automatically and gets an automatic picture that's perfect and generic. I got a little frustrated, because shooting digitally, you can shoot as much as you want, and that makes you lazy. You don't have to think about your shot. You just shoot and figure it out. I went back to the earliest form of photography for the challenge of it."
It wasn't easy at first, Cole said.
"I made every mistake in the book, and I also made mistakes that weren't in the book," she said. "I was making people who taught me this process scratch their heads."
After 11 years, Cole has perfected the wet collodion process, and she continues to enjoy creating art through photography.
"It's almost like making a sculpture," she said. "It's so tactile. I loved it. I loved the feeling of working with the photographs with my hands rather than clicking a shutter. That felt way too mechanical."
CLICK HERE TO BROWSE THE FULL BARBARA COLE COLLECTION
Click here to read view Barbara Cole's new publication "Between Worlds"
Vicki Smith, The Sky Is Blue. Oil on canvas, Diptych. 60 x 108 inches.
1. You have been a longtime practitioner of meditation – can you talk about how this practice has affected your art? Do meditation and artmaking have an especially symbiotic relationship in your life?
Art is a meditation, for both the maker and the viewer. Ideally meditation will quiet our busy minds and allow us to focus only on the present moment. When we look at art and become so fully absorbed by the image that everything else falls away, that is meditation. While painting I can lose track of time and space and my thoughts will become so quiet that I exist only in the present moment, that is meditation. That is also a very good painting day! It doesn’t always happen that way and the struggle is real, but as with all forms of meditation, the practice is to continually return to the present moment whenever thinking gets in the way. I’ve had a formal sitting meditation practice for as long as I’ve been painting. They are one and the same now.
2. Your swimmers often have distinct faces and characteristics, yet viewers of all types consistently remark that they immediately see themselves in them. Can you comment as to how and why you think this happens?
The figures are never meant to be portraits, rather they are portals. I deliberately try to keep the figure anonymous enough that the viewer will recognize themselves. As humans we want to make sense of what we are looking at and we can only react to art from our own perspective life experience. When people see my swimmers they immediately relate to the act of swimming which then triggers a personal memory and a cascade of senses, and suddenly they are in the painting. Most people tell me about their happy dreamy memories of swimming. It's all about the viewer’s remembered experience.
Vicki Smith, May. Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.
3. Your earlier paintings depicted swimmers in swimming pools. What made you decide to transition to lake swimming as your scene of choice, and do you feel any differently when you paint lake swimmers as opposed to pool swimmers?
It's never been about the act of swimming for me - it's the elusive lightness of being that I'm searching for. Water, whether lakes or pools, has become a recognizable place for my figures to exist and a familiar place for the viewer to enter the painting and from there they can explore their own memories of floating weightless and free. The pool series from a few years ago allowed me to explore the figure from below, their heads becoming part of the broken reflective surface. They were very spiritual. The lakes on the other hand are viewed from above, which shows me the depth of the water and the layers of reflected nature on the surface. The figure is liberated between the sky and the earth. I am currently obsessed with the relationship of the figure to this wild water but painting is an ever-evolving process and change will come adding to my understanding of practical and spiritual realms.
4. To date, your works have all depicted female swimmers – can your paintings be viewed as having a thread of feminism through them that connects them?
I went to art school a long time ago when "the male gaze" was the only available view of the female figure. The art history books championed male artists and female role models were hard to find. I was quite angry at how misogynistic the art world was and I decided to quietly dedicate my career to challenging that assumed norm by being a woman painting women. It's been more than 40 years and I'm now starting to notice a quickening shift in gender recognition and equality. The inclusion feels very exciting. We can't change the past, but we can create the future.
Vicki Smith, Stillwaters. Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.
5. The world as it is in our current time is far from peaceful in many respects - do you feel that art such as yours, having such an intimate and quiet focus, can have a significantly positive role to play in tempering the chaos?
I think that it’s equally important for artists to disturb the peace as it is to create peace. As a small gesture I hope that my work brings some solace to others. It’s a drop in the ocean, but peace and kindness have a Ripple Effect.
The artist.
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Steven Nederveen, Common Ground. Mixed Media on panel, 54 x 54 inches.
My work depicts scenes of nature as a metaphor for our internal world in a state of transience. We can see ourselves in its vastness and depths, its calm and its torrents. Nature reflects back to us our inner worlds and emotions. I've grown up with, and adopted for myself, a wonderful ease and enjoyment from nature walks and spending time on the water. The feelings of being grounded and expansive on these outings are so rich that it's easy to make spiritual associations to it.
I have spent many years developing my mixed media approach to image making, through which I visually express the energy in nature and our spiritual and emotional connection to it. I layer acrylic paint and C-print photographs, etching down into the emulsion of the photograph to reveal golden hues and also building up the surface with impasto and washes of colour. The result is an image with photo-sharp detail in focal areas, and painterly brush marks that obscure and create space for the imagination.
Steven Nederveen, Back From Infinity. Mixed Media on panel, 24 x 72 inches.
I've made many of my landscape scenes less about location and more about the boundaries between reality and dream. In a way, I also try to capture the emotional memory of a place instead of a documentary style image. This allows for a scene to be coloured by my experience, highlighting some features while others fade away or meld into some other vague memory. In the way that our minds can fuse together different memories into one event, I've made most of my landscapes from different views along the journey.
Steven Nederveen, Interrelated. Mixed Media on panel, 42 x 42 inches.
For the past fifteen years I have used my depiction of trees to evoke an "austere and serene beauty, expressing a mood of spiritual solitude recognized in Zen Buddhist philosophy” (from the Definition of Wabi). My trees represented the isolation, strength and stillness we have within ourselves. In this latest body of work, my trees focus on the communal aspects of life. I've added vibrant colors and delicate patterns to small tree groupings to imply connectedness: a vision of trees as having families and communities. This comes from relatively recent scientific research that has revealed that trees have a complex and interconnected social network. Through their root systems and underground fungi networks, trees are able to communicate with each other and share resources, such as nutrients and water. This network is sometimes referred to as the "wood wide web". The concept of the "wood wide web" highlights the importance of interconnectedness and community, and that trees are not the solitary plants we once thought, but are actually living in dynamic relationships to the other plants, able to work together to raise saplings, ward off intruders and send warnings. Just as humans rely on each other for support, cooperation, and empathy, trees also depend on each other for their survival.
-Steven Nederveen
The artist in his studio.
Following the recent release Between Worlds, published by teNeues publishing house, Cole’s coinciding September 2023 exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery mirrored the book’s holistic narrative by tracing Cole’s inventor-like spirit and painterly approach to photography sustained over the decades as well as where her work is heading next. The exhibition gathered works that span various points throughout her career as well as new works, together examining the ways she has experimented with photographic mediums to create imagery that is inventive, timeless, and dreamlike.
]]>Sheri Bakes, Summer Rain. oil on canvas, 60 x 66 inches.
1.Your new series is evocatively titled An Origami of Wind. Can you tell us about your fascination with wind and how it interacts with nature?
My Mom brought me along to her yoga classes when I was a newborn and I grew up sharing in this practice with her - she was my first teacher. She incorporated yoga practice into her entire life: spine rolling on the floor when I was 4 or 5 years old, tree pose while peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink, assisted warrior one asana while palliative, and finally her profound and challenging meditation and breath work through her last days. In more advanced study of yoga I learned the foundational importance of breath and this awareness has carried through into the studio and into the work.
2.Several of your new paintings carry the feeling and colours of dusk – is this deliberate, and is dusk a favourite time of day to paint?
This is an interesting question. I hadn’t thought of that but it’s true. My Mom loved sunsets and the time of day where night begins is something I’ve been paying a lot of attention to these days.
3. Your new works are an exploration of both Vancouver Island as well as the North Shore mountains of Vancouver – how do you feel these two areas compare in terms of similarities and differences? Do these places carry differing energy?
When I lived in Vancouver I hiked in the North Shore mountains with my dogs 4-5 times a week in the mornings through the spring, summer and fall months. We mostly hiked a couple trails on Mt. Seymour and the more we hiked these trails the more I felt the ever changing landscape occupying space inside myself. The boundary perception between inside and outside of myself became very thin. I suppose this is also true for the areas of Vancouver Island I’ve been fortunate enough to explore. I hadn’t considered a similarity in energy before but I think I gravitate towards certain kinds of energy and these two places offer this specific energy and light in really strong, consistent abundance.
Sheri Bakes, Origami Wind. Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches.
4. Your work carries a fascinating combination of both scientific and emotional inspirations – can you describe some of them and how do you unite these seemingly disparate influences in your work? For example, you have mentioned in the past being interested on how sensory stimulus can affect the brain (scientific), and also that you sometimes paint as physical act of gratitude (emotional).
I’m not sure I know how to answer this question.
I guess I don’t see these influences as all that different as they do intersect. It’s finding the intersections between them that I find most interesting and exciting.
I think one of the most influential experiences I’ve had was attending a meditation retreat in Indonesia in my early 20s. Somehow that experience set my brain up to be able to access and recognize and make connections really clearly. That experience helped me know how to meditate through having a stroke, which was a pretty incredible test of being able to navigate the mind while the brain was dealing with a major, potentially life threatening issue.
I love pulling from so many different disciplines and finding the thru-threads where they intersect. I think it’s the practice of mysticism to find where all seemingly individual pathways converge and the energy generated when those inter-connections are made is really what (for me personally) fuels my life’s work. Gratitude is definitely a cornerstone of my daily practice, both in and outside of the studio. I think the finished paintings are a hard copy archive of gratitude in physical form.
Sheri Bakes, Planting Flowers. Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
5. BC’s wildfires have grown increasingly prevalent – has this had an effect on your view of the significance of landscape painting?
BC’s wildfires are something I’m very aware of going into the studio, even more so now that I work and live within a grove of massive trees that are over a hundred years old. Living within this kind of potential danger impacts daily choices made during fire season and the concern isn’t an abstract one. There are so many facets to this issue, from an environmental and climate crisis standpoint to insurance companies not issuing insurance in “fire zones” for those who seek insurance to the helicopter pilots who are grateful to have work when fire season comes. Personally I am very emotionally impacted by the suffering and hardship of both human and wildlife in the wake of these wildfires and am always very grateful when communities come together to help both.
6. There is a sense of optimism in your paintings, and fans of your work consistently note the calm and meditative feeling that is translated through your images. Is this one of your conscious goals when creating your paintings?
Yes. This makes me happy. It reassures me that I’m doing what I’ve been called to do.
The artist in her studio.
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Eric Louie, From My Younger Self To Me. Oil on canvas, 47 x 88 inches
1. Your new exhibition Becoming is an exploration of the seasons, perpetual change, and the cyclical nature of life. Can you talk about what prompted you to build a collection around this particular idea?
The older we get, the cycle of life seems more prominent, and we reflect and reminisce more on the passing of time and events. I wanted to make some work which touched on this change and awareness in some capacity. Searching for some clarity personally, I wanted to exemplify each stage with their own beauties and the anticipation associated with each season. Something about yearning for change, and how seasons give it somewhat of a framework to ease the unknown…that comfort within familiarity which too evolves.
2. There are some works in this collection that move into exciting new aesthetic territory for you, with heavy impasto paint application and cutout petal forms applied to the painting edges. Can you tell us more about them?
I wanted to see how my paintings would react to some imposing painterly elements like impasto and gestural mark making. It began when I was cleaning a palette of paint and wiped it off on a painting that wasn’t quite working for me. The contrasting elements were quite striking and seemed to marry well. Some of the works included in the show exemplify this hybridization. The heavy paintings with the petal-like borders were pieces that became all about the impasto. The petal fringe was a way to bring it back into my realm of communication. I’m still developing these and hope to show more in the future.
Eric Louie, The Path We Take. Oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 18 x 14 inches
3. Your signature metallic effect is incredibly unique, and viewers of your work are often amazed that there is no actual metal present. How did you come to develop this look, and what were your earlier iterations like?
The metallic effect created by subtle gradients of oil paint became the primary element in my work around six years ago. Up to that point I had a variety of “tricks” I employed, but those eventually fell off as I was drawn to the architectural aspect of the metallic shapes. On a fundamental level I was always drawn to still life paintings and this methodology conveniently led me back to these roots. The architectural side of things allowed me to build the subject matter in a variety of ways connoting landscape, figurative and still-life-like scenarios. Like playthings, I use this language to make up whatever I fancy. My earlier works had sharper angles and less organic elements, which the work definitely has more of these days.
4. Your new collection appears to reflect a significantly botanical influence – is this by design?
I think the botanical aesthetic has always been imbedded in my language as my depicted environments have a “top” and “bottom” and things seem to fall into place in some sense of natural order. They aren’t overtly designed to represent nature, but they do touch on its periphery.
Eric Louie, Around The Sun. Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
5. How important to you is negative space in a composition?
Negative space merely acts as a backdrop to offset the subject matter. It has become more simplified and is generally a fine gradient within itself. It has become important to be simplified in contrast to some of the complex forms my subjects take on. It allows those things to have some clarity and attention.
6. Your works possess an inherent meditativeness – the compositions lead the eye slowly around the canvas and prompt the viewer to embrace a moment of calm. Can you share a little about how you come to build this type of energy into a painting?
My paintings usually start out calmly then become busy as I develop them and follow various routes. Sometimes they become overwhelming, and I keep repainting them until the complexities find harmony. At this point, the painting begins to resolve itself to the point where I can let it go. Sometimes this process can take months…They’re done when they are done!
Eric Louie, Wants & Needs. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches.
7. Always present in your work are references to and reflections of digital media (especially as the works begin as digital sketches on your iPad), yet they also incorporate natural and organic subjects and forms – how do you unite these seemingly disparate elements, and do you think of this as an act of optimism?
I do use the iPad to negotiate each shift in my compositions, and there is a back-and-forth between reality and design. The organic leaf-like foils are a conduit to relate the two elements together to something relatable for myself. Sight and touch are so essential to our existence and understanding of the world - this tangibility has always been an essential element in my paintings. I think in general there is some sense of optimism attached to new, shiny things and the “future” - Something new-and-improved is an idea propelling a lot of areas out there in the grand scheme. As an artist I think it's an interesting and ever-evolving area to explore about society.
The artist in his Vancouver studio.
]]>To celebrate the release of her new book, Between Worlds, Barbara Cole will join us at 1384 Dufferin Street, September 30th from 1-4 pm for an artist talk, Q&A and book signing.
Following the recent release Between Worlds, published by teNeues publishing house, Cole’s coinciding exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery mirrors the book’s holistic narrative by tracing Cole’s inventor-like spirit and painterly approach to photography sustained over the decades as well as where her work is heading next. The exhibition gathers works that span various points throughout her career as well as new works, together examining the ways she has experimented with photographic mediums to create imagery that is inventive, timeless, and dreamlike.
ORDER YOUR COPY OF BETWEEN WORLDS
VIEW BARBARA COLE'S FULL COLLECTION HERE
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The artist in her studio.
During Covid I amused myself by joining a group of artists who sent each other daily drawings of objects we had around the house. My pictures soon turned into a book about two ceramic mice, Moi Aussi and Royal Albert, who lived in teacups and adventured around my house and garden thinking this area was plenty big, and possibly even the whole world. Every day when I went up to my study, painted a watercolour, and wrote text to accompany it, I marvelled that I never ran out of ideas and the mice’s adventures continued seemingly without end. Painting for my show In Full Bloom struck me as a similar experience, except that I was the one having the adventures and each painting represented one of them.
Many people think an artist gets an idea for a painting and then simply paints what they see in their mind’s eye, but for me this could not be further from the truth. It is the uncertainty of the painting process, the dialogue with the work itself, and the unexpected twists and turns of creation that makes the act of painting compelling. A painting starts with my seeing something that intrigues me in a way I need to understand and communicate - walls of live orchids I saw six years ago decorating the walls of the flagship Ralph Lauren store on Madison Avenue from floor to ceiling; four dresses a gardener made herself and then hung over her plot of leeks, peonies, and lettuce plants to weather and fade away; the incredibly profligate annual delphinium patch at Van Dusen Garden. Or even just the shape of a single flower, possibly one I have already painted before but need to explore again in a new way.
Jamie Evrard's studio and a view of Star-Scattered Garden, oil on canvas, 62 x 62 inches in progress.
The process is strange. For instance, I started a delphinium painting with a large, transparent patch of Ultramarine Blue. I fell in love with that expanse of sheer blue gorgeousness, which made it hard to go on as I was afraid of ruining the thing. But soon the story became much more complicated - and what about the rest of the picture, how could it work with that powerful blue? As I went on, the blue became too deep and needed to be broken up and given highlights. The painting revealed itself to me in morphing stages as I worked to harmonize all of its parts.
In the white dress paintings, I was trying to figure out what was so mysterious and beautiful about those long garments hanging outside, where you’d least expect them. Some of the mystery of this subject matter turned out to involve a visual explanation of what the sunlight did to the white cloth, highlighting folds or coming through the fabric itself, making magic. Did anyone ever wear those dresses? They speak to me of absence, and the mystery only deepened as I worked on the quality of light.
Jamie Evrard, White Dresses - Study. Oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches.
And the orchid paintings! The photos of them sat in my computer for years as I tried to figure out what was it about them that fascinated me. It certainly wasn’t the colour: white on black basically. Finally, I just had to paint them to find out. As I worked, I discovered that it was the shapes of the petals repeating themselves and falling through space that I loved, and they led me close to abstraction. Some of these paintings went completely haywire and kept metamorphosing, leading me on a wild goose chase until I finally had to discard them hoping at least that I had learned something; others, like the ones in this new show, successfully capture the shapes and energy that I was first drawn to years ago.
Jamie Evrard, Orchid Study - White Flowers. Watercolour on paper, 24.5 x 24 inches.
Very occasionally, the stories the canvases tell are short - I paint them in a few days as they are pretty much what I thought they were, and this is very pleasant indeed.
And sometimes, seeking some sort of revenge, I paint on top of a previously abandoned work, revealing some of the under layers in dark transparent shades. When this works it is so much fun to change direction midstream. For this show I painted a favourite peony composition on top of two different orchid paintings just to see what those orchids would tell those peonies.
I paint to figure out exactly what I see in something that intrigues me and then communicate that to the viewer, and to find out how the story I’m creating will end.
– Jamie Evrard 2023
The artist in her studio.
]]>Acclaimed photographer and Bau-Xi artist Jeffrey Milstein has been awarded a Creative Quarterly Award for Photography for his upcoming Rizzoli book, London From The Air, to be published in April 2024.
To read the full list of winners, please click here.
]]>Enjoy the walk-around tour of the new space!
]]>BAU-XI GALLERY | DUFFERIN
On Monday, July 24th, we marked the start of a new beginning as Bau-Xi Gallery Toronto opened the doors to its new flagship location at 1384 Dufferin St. Toronto. We look forward to welcoming you in!
1384 Dufferin Street | CLICK HERE TO PLAN YOUR VISIT
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Sheila Kernan, I Can't Get Enough. Mixed Media on Canvas, 36 x 48 inches.
1. You are based in Calgary, Alberta. What is it that continually draws you to explore the coastal area?
I am inspired by many different subjects, themes and materials, and find joy in experiencing and exploring the world around me. Living in Canada, this can take me to a wide variety of landscapes including mountains, prairies and coastal areas. The biodiversity within the coastal areas is completely mesmerizing - I find it incredible how in just a few kilometres things can change so drastically from one area to the next. For instance, amongst the many colours, shapes and textures of the rock formations, one might be completely smooth and another rough with eroded circles. The types of aquatic life that form in the tide pools create beautiful patterns and textures. One can spend hours exploring, documenting and reflecting upon their beauty.
Sheila Kernan, Feel the Rush. Mixed Media on Canvas, 54 x 54 inches.
2. You are known for your inclusion of multiple paint application techniques to create the unique effect in your paintings. Can you tell us how this approach began and how it developed?
I am a super-curious artist who loves to explore and master different ideas, mediums and techniques. I have been that way since I was a young child. I first like to play with my materials using a scientific approach: I create many test pieces to see how my curiosities will develop, and I test and record different drying times, combinations of colours, mediums etc. This arms me with knowledge that then transfers into perfectly poured paints, gradations, hard edges, soft edges, thick textures and more. This process is ongoing, continually changing and always exciting. When I make new discoveries, I’m like a kid in a candy store who just discovered their favourite treat.
Regarding the actual act of painting, I could spend a lifetime figuring out different ways to manipulate paint to convey my narrative. With this collection I was obsessed with each individual layer. I started painting on raw canvas with wet-on-wet techniques - the untouched canvas absorbs the paint and creates the most magical blends from one colour to the next. I then saved specific areas that I loved and continued to work more layers. Subsequent washes absorbed differently into the canvas, pooling and resting on top. The edges dried differently, creating soft lace-like crisp lines. I then explored more washes, blends and textural components until I was happy the with the resulting work. It is like a dance, balancing between hard and soft edges, textures and patterns. I want the viewer’s eyes to effortlessly glide across the canvas and take in everything, both the individual parts and the painting as a whole.
Sheila Kernan, Come Get lost With Me. Mixed Media on Canvas, 44 x 84 inches.
3. To what extent do you like to plan a painting?
My work is extremely planned out in the initial stages - compositions are meticulously planned, and I make cut-out photo collages and compositional maquettes. I also create colour studies and plan out my layers. All this gives me a very good visual idea as to where each piece will end up even before I start painting. However, once I start to physically create the work, I rely on intuition and a lot of looking, thinking and reacting to uncontrollable moments. This is where the true magic happens: allowing the uncontrollable moments of painting to direct me to save and enhance them. This is where my best work is created – it’s a balance between planned and unplanned moments.
4. You talk about Gestalt theory which you brilliantly apply to your painting practice. Can you tell us more about this, and what prompted you to utilize this concept?
“Gestalt Theory” is a theory about how the human eye perceives visual elements. I was naturally drawn to it because I have worn glasses my whole life, and I am always aware of things being in and out of focus in my visual fields. When I discovered the theory, I immediately felt a connection to it because I could understand and relate it so well.
Gestalt theory aims to show that when complex scenes are reduced to simpler shapes and patterns, the eye will then “connect the dots” and perceive these shapes as a connected whole rather than as individual parts. It has five main principles: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure and connectedness. The concept is very much like the connect-the-dot exercises we did as kids: our eyes use these principles to group things together even if we can clearly see separate parts. If you look long enough at a connect-the-dot image, your eyes will add the line and complete the form on its own.
What I love about Gestalt theory as it applies to my paintings is that two things can be true at the same time. From closer up, one can see an abstract collection of individual elements (a stencilled, hard-edged form, separated marks, dots, dashes or lines, etc). Stepping back, the individual parts form a complex coastal scene as the eye automatically connects all the elements. As such, my paintings are both abstract and realistic at the same time. Not all details are provided for the viewer; I am asking your eyes to fill in the gaps.
In understanding these Gestalt principles, I am hoping to predict how different design elements will come together in my work.
Sheila Kernan, Can't Get You Out of My Head. Mixed Media on Canvas, 48 x 48 inches.
5.What or who would you say are additional influences in your artistic approach?
I am influenced by life itself. Being an artist is 24/7 - you never know what is going to inspire you, so you must remain open and available to new ideas, curiosities, and questions. Solving visual and contextual problems becomes second nature. I always have my phone and sketchbook on hand to record notes, take photos, or talk thorough an idea. In recording hundreds of tidbits, you never know what will come through in your work next. Often, I resolve things in my dreams and wake up ready to put ideas to canvas.
6.What three words do you think best describe your work?
Bold, skillful, textural.
The artist at work in her Calgary studio.
]]>Situated at the corner of Dufferin Street and Geary Avenue (just north of Dupont Street), the gallery will be in an area of economic and cultural growth, finding us in excellent company with a number of other galleries and artisan retailers. This expansive location will provide us with over 17,500 sq. ft. of exhibition space.
]]>1384 Dufferin Street | CLICK HERE TO PLAN YOUR VISIT
On Monday, July 24th, we will mark the start of a new beginning as Bau-Xi Gallery Toronto opens the doors to its new flagship location at 1384 Dufferin St, Toronto, Ontario.
Situated at the corner of Dufferin Street and Geary Avenue (just north of Dupont Street), the gallery will be in an area of economic and cultural growth, finding us in excellent company with a number of other galleries and artisan retailers. This expansive location will provide us with over 17,500 sq. ft. of exhibition space.
As Bau-Xi has been located across from the Art Gallery of Ontario for almost 50 years, we intend to maintain a presence in downtown Toronto, continuing to engage with the arts community we have seen blossom around us. 340 Dundas St. West will now purley be a exhibition space. Our extensive inventory will be located at our Dufferin St. location. Our gallery associates are happy to arranging a viewing of your favourite artworks. Click here to contact our team.
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin is open daily from 10 am - 5:30 pm. Bau-Xi Gallery | Dundas is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00am - 5:30pm.
There will be a grand opening in early September - stay tuned for further announcements via email and social media! Thank you for joining us in this exciting new stage – we look forward to what the future will bring!
]]>Drew Burnham, Nicola. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 45.25 x 64 inches, 26 January 2021-22 October 2021
1.Your richly detailed images of forests and coastlines thrum with an incredible energy and sense of movement – they clearly indicate a very deep connection to and understanding of BC’s nature. When and how did this connection develop for you?
It was in 1968, in drawing class at UVic. A beautiful, fully formed image just slid into my awareness… then back out a second later. It was not an entirely new kind of image in that it followed in the figurative paths I had been working on in those days, but the thing is, it came with the feeling of it being given to me by some entity, with the added message that I had 'help' doing paintings now. A peculiar thing, I know, but that ‘relationship' has remained with me ever since, and is part of every day's work. Now, rather than a connection to or understanding of a subject, I have found there is a requirement that I almost 'be' the object being painted, to the point that I feel as if that object - the rock or tree or figure - is painting itself. In working that way, I find I am not in control of how much time a painting takes to complete, but I always love how the work turns out.
2. Your paintings require an incredibly significant amount of time and attention to complete. To what degree do you like to plan your approach to a painting, and how do you prepare for a typical day in the studio?
The first thing of each day is a good cup of Americano while staring at the painting, all the while slowly mentally 'erasing' myself so only a sort of spirit is left - a no-thing, an empty vessel ready to receive. That way, a drawing or painting can flow through me without being inhibited by me in its development: the painting grows on its own, using my paints, brushes, palette and body, I just watch. That goes on all day.
The artist's POV of his studio oil palette.
3.The paintings in your new exhibition are all titled using names of specific locations, as are the vast majority of your past canvases. Is it important to you to always reflect the spirit of a specific place in your work, as opposed to an imagined/amalgamated landscape?
In my experience, it is paramount that the essence existing in a place or subject be fully realized in an image for it to come alive. A title can easily colour, limit or steer how one sees a painting, thereby muddying an individual's personal experience of it. My preference is to keep the name simple and non-directive, so the painting is not tinged or tainted and the viewer gets their own unadulterated relationship to the subject on the canvas. In addition, I am often asked for the location of the subject in the paintings when the place name is not in the title.
Drew Burnham, Port Renfrew. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, October 2021-April 2022.
4. Your renderings of water always have a particularly magical quality – can you share a little about how you approach this formidable subject, with all its temperaments, guises and whims?
Thinking water an overused subject, for many years I would not use it in a painting. However, after much goading by Mrs. B., I gave in and utilized that long-dreaded subject. That one painting exposed me to the enormous possibilities of water. An incredible supply of rhythms, textures, colours, actions and depths, along with beauty galore, exists there. So much so, along with our living out here surrounded by ocean, that most of the paintings contain that treasure. The character and designs used to make the water are determined by the beat of the other parts of each particular painting, really contributing to the musicality of a completed image.
The artist's studio with his acrylic palette on the left and oil palette on the right, and his acrylic underpainting visible in the upper right corner of the canvas.
5. How do you feel your painting has evolved or developed over the years, and are there elements in the Poetry of Place works that represent newer territory for you?
Evolution in the work, or the course the paintings take to become complete, seems solely determined by the relationship of one brush stroke to the next - they must speak to each other aesthetically. Beyond that, each stroke has to sit well among all the other parts into which it is being placed. As such, the accuracy of the design of each stroke, the colour used, the life the stroke contains and the execution of the swish of the strokes, determine the evolution of the work. Now, beginning with a complex and free-flowing abstract acrylic under-painting, I use oils in variously transparent overlays - sometimes many layers - to paint in the image while allowing bits of the underpainting to show through. I continue until the last little request from the painting is done. It is my hope that the result is a richer, deeper image and a likewise fuller experience for viewers of these works.
The artist at work in his studio.
]]>Vicki Smith, "To Be", Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48 inches
We are pleased to share that The Walrus has recently featured Vicki Smith's work and interview in the "Summer Reading Issue"!
The publication writes: "All of the women in Vicki Smith's paintings are suspended, floating in water and time. Sometimes you can glimpse some rocks or stretch of shore at the edge of a frame, but mostly they are alone, buoyant and unbothered. These scenes are rendered almost romantically, with impasto snarls of blue and green and ochre, and when Smith talks about them, she uses words like "serene," and "meditation," and "memory." The scenes she renders today are meant to be bucolic, reminders of childhood moments that were easier and more carefree, flooded with endorphins."
Vicki Smith is known for her paintings of female figures that explore the possibilities and limitations of gravity. Often shown suspended in rippling water; twisted and upside-down, falling into and out of the picture plane, these figures are often so precariously placed upon the canvas that they threaten to slip away or dissolve. Though rarely grounded, they are always balanced.
Kindly visit the artist's page on our website to view the current art collection.
]]>Sakura and Full Moon, Study 2, Urakawa, Hokkaido, 2015, Silver Gelatin Print, Courtesy of the artist
We are pleased to share that The Guardian has recently featured a series of images from Michael Kenna's extensive travels to Japan! Click here to view the feature.
The publication writes: "Celebrated as one of the world’s most prominent landscape photographers, Kenna is known for his poetic black-and-white images from locations around the globe."
Since first traveling to Japan in 1987, Michael has returned on numerous occasions, extensively photographic a country that has had a profound effect on his practice - shaping his vision of elegant minimalism. The artist still continues to develop photographs in his own darkroom using the silver gelatin process, creating images that have an enormous amount of depth and intimacy.
Kindly visit the artist's page on our website for various works from his Japan series, as well as a myriad of other locations he has documented over his extensive career, which spans four decades, over four-hundred and fifty solo exhibitions, and has work included in more than a hundred permanent collections.
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