News

We are thrilled to announce that Cori Creed and her contemporary Okanagan home will be featured in the January/ February 2020 issue of Dwell Magazine. This story will highlight her cross-disciplinary collaboration with Kevin Vallely, the acclaimed architect and adventure enthusiast who designed her space. You can read the article here.

Blurring the lines between art and design and drawing from the surrounding landscape, Kevin Vallely’s concept was inspired by the weathered exterior of a fallen log, which, when cut away, reveals the rich warmth of living wood. With a keen focus on texture and surface, Creed and Vallely sought to emphasize these qualities with a distressed and oxidized raw wood siding façade, and by devising a central stone wall as an anchor point for the home — creating a space with unique architectural character which reflects the subtleties of place.

"Because of our close relationship with Kevin and his family, we were able to continue this collaboration for years making our own furniture, lighting and carefully adding to the spaces and the flow of the sculptural home that Kevin conceived." - Cori Creed

VIEW WORK BY CORI CREED

1)  Can you tell us about yourself and how you became an artist?

 I’ve always been a painter in one way or another, starting from childhood. My father was a furniture designer and when I was young we would spend a lot of time drawing and painting together. Typical of my father, nothing was too serious. We had fun drawing and painting square-headed cats and telling jokes while making abstract expressionist paintings. Having spent a lot of time in his workshop - materiality, design and art were second nature to me.

In my studio now, I still try to maintain a sense of play, I think a lot about design, and make large-scale oil, acrylic and digital paintings. As a professor at OCADU, I am attempting to inspire students with a sense of fun when developing their work too. I do have an analytical side too. Discussions about how art is implicated in our complex technological society is why I love teaching.

2)  Describe your work in three words.

Light, colour, immaterial

3)  What inspires the colours for your artworks?

Basically, everything inspires my colour choices, as I really am attuned to colour in my everyday life – most specifically how high-key synthetic colour intersects with more somber or natural colour. I think very consciously about colour – most specifically how light may fall on architecture during certain weather, colour in art that I love or simply considering contemporary fashion and interior design.

Currently, in Italy, I have been researching the Florentine and Venetian Renaissance colour palettes – their differences, and histories. I am connecting with how contemporary designers use Renaissance painting in interiors or in fashion here as well. For me, contemporary and historical art, design and simply interesting colour details found on the street can inspire me.

4)  What is your creative process? Can you walk us through each stage - from coming up with ideas/themes/concepts you want to explore, to translating that into an artistic vision, to creating the physical artworks and installations?

My creative process is active all moments of the day. I place great emphasis upon absorbing the colours, textures and events of daily life - yet with an internal thought and documentation structure that I use for my artwork. I take thousands of pictures and write notes on my phone. I collect things - mostly printed matter that I arrange on desks and tables at home, and in the studio. This process is sort of like collage building from everyday things that inspire me. When it comes time to make work – I just start intuitively (both with the oil and digital paintings). My digital work allows me to make a lot of work that I can edit daily. To make the conventional paintings, I must be in the studio which obviously requires a different time commitment. The best day in the studio is a long one, where I work on many paintings over the day, I wander around looking at art books and I’ll cut up magazines, rearrange my piles of things on desks, and make/refine some of my digital work – all while listening to my favourite podcasts about politics and book reviews. My process is strongest when I don’t focus too intently on one thing. I move my vision or even feeling from one piece to another, hoping overtime to find overall cohesion in the work. Those days are sacred to me. My process is a relatively slow one where I revise all of the work a lot. A huge influence in this respect is Matisse. He used to paint over and over paintings until they felt right – so did Richard Diebenkorn. Great things happen when one works this way. The underpainting comes through and/or previous digital layers overlap others to cause surprise compositions. I must always stay attuned to the process this way.

As my work has a lot of layers – in the digital process, I make many layers, rearrange them and then often have to sort many away. Deciding something is complete takes a long time - through the act of slow looking and fast making.

5)  How has being in Italy affected your work?

I am very fortunate to be teaching here and learning alongside my students. I attend all of the art history classes where our wonderful art historian lectures onsite in churches, museums and at important sites. We are mostly in Florence, yet we’ve also been to Siena, San Gimignano, Venice, with an upcoming trip to Rome. I am gaining a much deeper understanding of Renaissance history and I’m finding it so interesting as there are strong commonalities with the time in which we are living now. How power and politics, art and science, as well as new technologies are expressed the in art and architecture of the period fascinates me. Since I don’t have to take the exams, I have the luxury of absorbing the atmosphere of the places that we travel to. It is November here, which is the rainy season. The skies are incredible with deep blue-greys with moments of warm sunlight sneaking through.

I have been drawn to pre-Renaissance artwork too, like Giotto’s paintings at the Uffizi Gallery and his stunning frescos at the Arena Chapel. At my Florentine apartment, I am working with egg tempera paint because it was used during this pre-Renaissance period. By mixing egg yolk with beautiful powdered pigments that I purchase at Zecchi, the historically important art supply store in Florence, I am making colour studies in layered stripe paintings. These studies are definitely a challenge as I struggle to learn how to use the materials and the colour is very different from my usual high-key palette. Through a lot of layering I am able to achieve a strength of colour.

Finally, I’ve now attended the Venice Biennale twice. Ralph Rughoff has curated an exhibition of high urgency. The exhibition is so exciting for its global reach as well as the deftly integrated multi-media works that address the anxiety of our times very well. It’s also wonderful to see powerful painting represented within this mix. I’m thrilled to have seen mostly new work by Julie Mehretu, Nijideka Akuynili Crosby, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. I will only learn how this show has affected me many years down the road.

So, all in all, it’s hard to say how this experience will influence my work in the long run. I will say that I have constant visions of how drapery glows, the incredible sunsets and skies. I also try to capture the energy of these very busy cities where people live contemporary lives within the rich historical settings. It’s a real contrast and I hope my compositions capture this.

6)  What messages or emotions do you hope to convey to your audience?

I am attempting to capture a sense of atmosphere and intensity that I feel in Italy. The colour of warm light as it transforms the skies and falls on the textured surfaces of architecture. The historical paintings of Raphael, Botticelli, Giotto and Leonardo – the colour, details and control of their subject matters are sensibilities seeping into my digital paintings.

Yet, while in Italy, I’ve noticed how much I am drawn to the weather – most specifically the skies and waterways. This is reflective of the fact that I am walking a lot by taking in the cities that I’m visiting. Recently there’s been too much rain – first in Venice and now in Florence. Water levels in both cities are at historic levels that are now causing damage. This is concerning. It’s affecting my work, no doubt.

7)  Who are some contemporaries or figures in art history who have influenced you?

Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Amy Sillman all use colour and gesture powerfully. All three painters make unabashed large-scale, confident, abstract paintings that provoke enormous admiration in me as a painter.

Gerhard Richter’s analytical approach to making varied bodies of artwork that still engage in the beauty of painting has been a long-time influence upon my practice, most specifically as a younger artist. No matter how much I try to get away from his work, his timeless subject matters, mesmerize me whenever I encounter them in person.

Although drawn to the colour used in the high Italian Renaissance, 16th-century Dutch still-life painting has been the real influence. This painting seems subtle, yet has a quiet force in its seemingly mundane subject matter and lushly restrained painting style.

I have so many more influences – Milton Avery, Fairfield Porter, Monet, Matisse, Anne Truitt, Some are Canadians and include Gina Rorai, Sarah McCullough, Brent Walden!

8)  Can you tell us about your new Italian Digital series of paintings and the improvisational approach used in their creation? Does this apply to all of your works or mainly this body of work?

Through painting, I am always attempting to capture a sense of energy, as well as an immaterial presence that I feel represents our contemporary time. My compositions, slightly off-kilter, active, and even a touch unsettling, capture the luminosity that I see, and tension that I feel between the old and the new in Italy.

I am studying so much historical art and so many elements are ending up in my new digital pieces, consciously and unconsciously.

I always work intuitively at the outset, yet a methodology to my intuitive approach. I start quickly and slow down when decisions need to be made. With the digital software that I use, I make many layers capturing brushstroke and colour. With these works I limit myself to 6 layers, yet start with approximately 20. I move things around compositionally, add and remove layers and play with layer opacities for a long time until I decide the artworks feel finished. This step can take some time. The particular pieces that I am working on at the time (usually about five images) stay on my desktop so that I continue to see them while I’m working on other work. I like it when the little images on my screen nudge me to open them and force me to finish them. I complete the group of images and move on to the next. Interestingly my titles have evolved into Italian and they certainly allude to the landscape and a sense of space here.

At this point, I hope to print these works on paper. I work on the digitals quite consistently while periodically making the egg tempera colour studies at my Florentine apartment. I’m very excited about a new start in my studio in January with many new artworks to sort through for large-scale production.

VIEW WORK BY ANDA KUBIS

1) Can you tell me about the symbolism behind some of your different trees?

Since the image of a tree itself is highly symbolic I hope each person, regardless of cultural background, can assign meaning that is specific to themselves.   Each painting of a tree or trees plays with how the environment influences growth and life.  My trees show what interests me - the way that they respond to the impact of various stressors.  I often paint bent and twisted shapes.  I love how trees can somehow survive even the hardest conditions.  I think we all can associate our own paths through life with these shapes.

Trees also present us with “beauty”.  The concept of beauty has a long history and much has been written about it.  I often strive to address this notion with my work.

2) How does your commitment to ecological responsibility intertwine with your art practice?

I have planted and nurtured thousands of trees since I was a child.  When we first purchased acreage for a home & studio in Ontario my wife, (the artist Teresa Cullen), and I planted three empty hay fields with thousands of saplings.  Today they are a beautiful pine forest.  We’ve done the same at our current smaller property near Lake Simcoe.  I am an organic gardener too.  Sustainable living in a clean sustainable environment is essential.  My paintings usually infer this.  I hope they inspire people to be concerned and activist.

3) I read in your artist statement that deserts, mountains, and vast open plains serve as great inspiration for your artwork. Where do you search for sublime landscapes?

I find these places pretty much everywhere I travel; in Anatolia, Spain, the Prairies, Rockies and especially the American Southwest.  I find the landscape and trees interest me.  The more open the space, the better I like the way trees present themselves to me.

4) How has the artistic treatment of your work changed over the years and what triggers the shifts?

I began my professional career in the late 1970s and early 80s creating abstractions that alluded to landscapes.  At the time my wife and I shared a studio in a warehouse at King and Dufferin Streets in Toronto.  The city and the art scene certainly influenced my work. 

Once we relocated to the countryside north of Toronto (Grey County) the surrounding landscape challenged me to interpret it in ways that were unique to my new perceptions.  The work shifted somewhat so that horizon, sky, hills and trees became more recognizable while expressionistic paintwork was still important.  Trees gradually became more of a focus after planting so many of them.

When we moved and built a second studio, in Oro Medonte ON in 1998, there was a giant sugar maple tree on the property.  That grand dame was nicknamed “The Queen”.  Living under her shifted my focus to trees as my main subject.  The painterly treatment has varied over the years in response to my interests in methods of making paintings, from allusions to representation in a traditional sense.  Recently, I’ve been playing with ambiguous color backgrounds as foils for tree forms.

5) Your tree paintings have a calming and meditative effect and I think this is partly because of the removal of all non-essential visual elements in their compositions.  Can you tell me about the process of reduction in your work?

A few years ago I became interested in how I could strip down my paintings to emphasize mostly the tree.  I played around for a year or two with abstracted backgrounds.  Some of these backgrounds were resolved paintings in themselves even before the tree was painted in.  This was tricky because sometimes the background became more interesting than the main subject. 

Over time I’ve worked to pare down the backgrounds to play a supporting role, like the grounding tones in a musical piece (think the rhythm section in a jazz performance). I have a strong interest in visual art that is grounded in spiritual dimensions, with an emphasis on images and objects that help us to suspend thinking and experience what’s present.  There are some Asian ink wash paintings that really inspire me. "Pine Trees" by Hasegawa Tōhaku (Japanese, 1539–1610) is one of my favorites.

 VIEW WORK BY ROBERT MARCHESSAULT

We interviewed the fearless Kathryn Macnaughton on her latest adventure, an artist residency in Lisbon where she has spent the last couple months exploring Portugal and pushing her creative practice through experimentation.

1) What is the name of the residency you are at and how long are you planning on being in the program for?

PADA Studios. I was there in July and August and I’ll be back there again for another month in October.

2) Describe your work in 7 words or less.

Expressive, Colourful, Bold, Graphic

3) What is something most people don’t know about you? 

I’m addicted to peeling dried paint. When I want to relax and meditate in the studio, I’ll peel all the paint off my containers.

 4) How did you hear about the residency?

Online/social media. I was looking for residencies with large studios. Pada is in a beautiful warehouse in an industrial park on the other side of the river from Lisbon. I also have friends that live in Lisbon so it was a no brainer.

5) What pushed you to take on an artist residency abroad and what do you hope to achieve while in this program?

I needed a change. I wanted my work to evolve and I knew that finding inspiration from another environment and meeting like-minded artists would help with that. 

I work alone in Toronto and I’m quite isolated in my studio. I wanted to see how I would work in a larger space with other artists. It was great! I think I’ve grown so much as an artist. 

6) I would love to hear about the process of creating these new works during your time at Pada studios. Has this new environment inspired new elements, textures or colors in your work?

When I arrived at the residency, I always had the intention of trying to make my own shaped canvases. It was great. I learned how to build my own stretchers with shapes protruding out of them. The idea evolved and I was very inspired by the window frames on residential and industrial buildings in Portugal. They have interesting designed grills that go over the windows, especially the ones that surrounded the industrial park in Barreiro (the town where the residency is).

I began to have ideas about making window frames for my paintings. Right now, they are solid colours that compliment the washes and the flat colours on the canvas. I’m playing around with the relationship between the frames and the background canvas. I’m finding it important to find the right balance between the two. I’d also like to gesturally paint the frames and have them compliment the flat colour of the canvas. 

7) Are you working in a shared space with other artists, and if so, how has this experience affected your artistic practice?  How are you finding it in comparison to working out of your own studio?

Yes. We work in a large warehouse together, but there are partial dividers between the studios. 

It has been an incredible experience. I love working with other artists and I think it has helped me grow. There are pros and cons. When I’m alone there are no distractions, but sometimes I need them. Having other artists around has given me space to think about my work from other perspectives.

VIEW WORK BY KATHRYN MACNAUGHTON