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LANDSCAPE
& MEMORY
Six Okanagan Artists
This exhibition
focuses on a group of six artists from the Okanagan Valley in British
Columbia. While these artists have long influenced each other's
work, Landscape & Memory marks the first occasion on which they
have exhibited together. The work of this group blurs the line between
the landscape of the body and the body of the landscape and employs
them as a cipher for the nameless yearnings of human experience.
The show
combines two separate but converging ideas. The first is the notion
of landscape representing an abstraction of our most deeply rooted
values and prejudices. The second is the use of decontextualized
imagery as a bridge between the familiar and the romantic. The artists
in this exhibition not only have figurative imagery and a place
of origin as a common point of departure in their works, but they
share a common way of using it as a means to an end.
The show
will draw the viewer through a series of interpretations from our
interior or spiritual landscapes, through the memory of landscape
or that which we see with the mind's eye, to the imposing presence
of where we live. This group represents a small number of the artists
who live and work in the interior, and the exhibition focuses on
just one of the many approaches to their practice which artists
in the region are pursuing. What they do represent is a body of
accomplished work that is intrinsically related to its point of
origin.
Jane
Everett and Jim Kalnin
The
Artists:
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Bill
Bragg blurs the boundaries between figurative and landscape
painting making us reconsider the body as form. In his use
of color layered over a skeleton of plaster, Bragg's paintings
are as much interior as exterior landscape.
Bill
Bragg - Approaching Storm, 2002; oil on canvas
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Rose
Braun's paintings on metal use landscape as an emotional
cipher. Her brooding pondscapes speak of depths and hidden
meanings that are almost but not quite within grasp. The
reflective quality of the metal is employed intelligently
to complement Braun's skill in handling paint.
Rose
Braun - Marsh, 2002; oil on metal plate
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Anna
Coghlan uses collage and drawing to render an image
that is rooted in the figure. Her incorporation of the errors
and pentimento of the drawing process yield a surface landscape
that is dense with meaning.
Anna
Coghlan - Dancer in Red II, 2001; mixed media on paper
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Jane
Everett's work sees landscape in reflection, playing
the surface of the canvas against the surface properties
of water. Seen in a fractured form these paintings come
closer to the way we remember landscape than to its physical
appearance.
Jane
Everett - Requiem II, 2003; oil on canvas
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Jim
Kalnin, who teaches in the Fine Arts Department of Okanagan
University College, uses a spiritual iconography in his
landscapes. The image of fish, coyote and deer float through
an apocalyptic vision that tells of a passionate commitment
to the environment.
Jim
Kalnin - Shift 1, 2003; mixed media on paper
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Mary
Smith McCulloch, Professor Emeritus of the Fine Arts
Department at Okanagan University College has used monoprint
techniques to render complex patterns. Her imagery is the
result of a subtle transposition from recalled source to
concept to image. The rich effective combination of both
the artist's inner and physical processes sets up a rhythm
that invokes a resonant response within the viewer.
Mary
Smith McCulloch - Vineyard B 1, 2002; monoprint
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