About the art, individual pieces, exhibitions, process etc.
Meet Idealized Figures, one of the newest paintings in my series exploring the relationship between a little pink pear and a cake plate of jelly doughnuts. I was working on correcting and straightening some of the lines in the painting, when it occurred to me that this is what we do in life too; with our diet practices we attempt to correct nature and idealize our own forms. With this insight I decided to emphasize my correction lines in the painting.
Early this summer I painted this exterior mural on the new garage door my husband built and installed last year. It was his idea to do a mural on what looked like a big blank canvas to both of us, and with that sort of faith in my abilities, how could I decline the opportunity right?
The image we chose was from a recent visit to the lake country around my husbands childhood home. This was a small local swim and camping spot walking distance from his home. You can see our grown up kids in the picture, but I opted not to include any figures in the painting.
Neighbourhood response was so positive to this mural that I have decided to open up possible bookings for garage door murals for next summer. Prices would start at $2500 in Calgary. I would only have a few slots available, weather dependant, so if you are interested in getting a mural done, make sure to touch base with me early in the new year to reserve a slot.
Starting from the observations of writers that women’s roles have been in some ways rolled back to the expectations of an earlier era due to the effects of pandemic lockdowns and school closures, the Kitchen Feminism project asked a diverse group of women to reflect on the ways they perceived their own lives to have been sent back in time by the pandemic:
Below are sketches of some of my ideas for this collaborative project which brings the individual stories of women’s experiences of Covid-19 to life in a series of photographs and short videos produced by Dawn van de Schoot. My drawings reference Jane Austen, Peg Bundy, and a painting by Marie-Denise Villers, Portrait of Charlotte du Val d’ogees, c. 1801, which depicts the subject drawing beside a window with a broken glass.
As someone who has long occupied a home studio, I suddenly found myself with a house full of people all trying to work from home at the same time. It felt like I was living through the clash of two eras: heretofore I’d had to consciously contradict the contemporary suspicion that the stay at home worker is a Peg Bundy ala 1990’s sitcom Married With Children. However now I was faced with the bizarre condition of having a sudden spike of interest in my work, with all the demands that come with that, while also having to keep up an appearance of not working, ala Regency era writer Jane Austen, for the sake of my co-habitants working in a variety of remote/zoom configurations in the same space. Looking back, it’s a little comical.
I am excited to share how @dawn_vandeschoot, photographer Shannon Smith and stylists @nicoledoesmakeup and the rest of the team @kitchenfeminism translated my experience into their medium. The project images for Kitchen Feminism: Moving Pictures are now live on their website at Kitchen Feminism! I’ll also be sharing some of the images from the project on my Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Finally completed after 3 months on the easel, give a warm welcome to Set In Stone. As part of my Cravings series exploring food obsession, Set in Stone features returning characters Pink Pear and the Jelly Doughnuts. While I Only See You focused on the exclusive relationship between Pink Pear and Jelly Doughnut, this painting also features an art history guest appearance by the OG stone cold mama of the paleo world, the Venus of Willendorf, reigning atop her divan of doughnuts.
Following on Containing Desire (above), which addressed the futility of trying to contain the seductive influence of our favourite foods, I introduced the idea of the deep biological or evolutionary basis for that power. Since the reason for the dilemma is really nothing to do with the food itself, but to do with our own biological safeguards from starvation, no mountain of contemporary rationalization will depose the reign of our cravings.
It’s often the ad libs that bring new discoveries and additions to my visual language. I truly loved painting the conversion of the stripes on the kitchen towel into veins of dripping jelly as first developed in Sisyphus Motivation (above). In Set In Stone I discovered I could morph of the piped cream on the doughnuts into regal purple clouds which surround our paleo-lithic golden goddess. Check out the progression video for how this painting evolved on the canvas:
I recently finished I Only See You, a new oil painting in my Cravings series of still life paintings exploring food obsession. I Only See You focuses on the exclusionary relationship between Pink Pear and Jelly Doughnut as Sisyphus’ warnings of the doomed nature of the task fade into the background.
My inspiration for keeping the composition relatively spare in this painting came, as per Tempting Fruit, from the background colour of Terre Vert and white that I initially laid down. I loved the way colour gave an empty pining feel to the composition, so I chose to emphasize that.
I loved working with this soft complementary colour scheme so much, I think I will be using that again at some point soon in this series, possibly in the upcoming Cupcake/Fragonard paintings.
I recently finished Tempting Fruit, a fresh new oil painting in my Cravings series exploring food obsession. It features returning characters Pink Pear and the Jelly Doughnuts, as well as an art history guest appearance by a couple (or pair) from the right hand side of the central panel of Bosch’s masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1515) (below).
By <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Hieronymus_Bosch” class=”extiw” title=”w:en:Hieronymus Bosch”><span title=”Dutch painter (c.1450-1516)”>Hieronymus Bosch</span></a> – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external free” href=”http://boschproject.org/dzi/00MCPVIS.dzi”>http://boschproject.org/dzi/00MCPVIS.dzi</a> (downloaded with <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external text” href=”https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-rs/”>dezoomify-rs</a>), Public Domain, Link
The inspiration for bringing Bosch into the picture began with the viridian green background in the early stages of the painting, along with the way the towel seemed to be leading the pear into the temptation of engaging with the cupcake. I really felt the desire to add a garden element to this background, and what better garden to explore in the theme of temptation than that of Bosch’s mythological garden as he sermonizes on the dangers of indulging in earthly delights. Originally I had added a third figure, but later decided to paint him out as extraneous to the main argument.
One painting leads to another, so currently I am working on a new set of paintings exploring the cupcake with peeled wrapper as a character with art historical reference to another famous garden painting, Fragonard’s The Swing (1767).
Also in the planning phase are a series of ten large scale Bosch inspired still life paintings. If you know of a venue or organization that would be interested in working with me to get these made or have them shown, I’d love to hear from you.
Recently I have become fascinated with the paintings of 17th century Flemish still life painter Clara Peeters. Known as one of the originators of the ‘breakfast piece’ genre of still life painting, as well as the practice of including self portraits in the reflective surfaces of objects, I have become more than a little obsessed with understanding the Dutch Golden Age fascination with depictions of food and how that might connect with health and diet culture, wealth disparity, economics, the role of women, and depictions of the self. These two drawings are a way for me to find a new perspective on a familiar looking subject.
In Kitchen Feminism the team at the Kitchen Feminism project asked me to bring my sketchbook along so that they could film me drawing. Rather than work on something random I decided that I would like to work on something that really interested me and that potentially has connections thematically to the Kitchen Feminism project (read more about my Kitchen Feminism experience in this blog post). So I started this drawing under those highly stressful conditions, to complete later in my studio.
The second drawing, After Clara Peeters, was done specifically referencing one of her paintings, as opposed to my recollections of her work. I was able here to be much more analytical in the transfer from one perspective to another, which lead me to some interesting insights about her compositions which I think I will share in future works along this avenue. Watch for more to follow from this exploration in the months to come.
Although the image above is of my most recently completed painting, Sisyphus Jelly Doughnuts, this is not a blog post that comes to any conclusions or announces any new events. Actually this one is just about some of the research and influences I am looking at as I journey through my current direction in the studio.
Obviously some of my research involves baking or buying delicious treats to use as still life props. Definitely a bit of a conflict of interest going on here. However for the most part, being an artist and talking about the psychological effects of long term caloric restriction through art means I am doing a lot more research into art history than into recipes.
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To begin with I am looking at the often trivialized history of still life painting from the symbolic breakfast pieces of the Flemish god-mother of the genre, Clara Peeters, to the 20th century commercial culture influenced art of the Pop movement.
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That covers the form and some of the content related to my interest in still life and specifically still life incorporating food, but then there is the psychological and moral aspects of health and diet culture that impact our relationship with food and our bodies. For that I am looking at Greek krater art, the Northern Renaissance art of Hieronymus Bosch , and the work of the 20th century Surrealists, for their interest in depicting the other world of the subconscious.
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So that’s where I’m at now, who do you think I should be looking at for research?
So what am I about in this exhibition installed now at the Alberta Society of Artists Gallery? I’ve uploaded this video explaining my process to my youtube channel. It was kindly recorded and edited by one of the artists in the show, Jessica Hauser:
You can check out more of Jessica Hauser’s videos here.
On Thursday May 20th the Alberta Society of Artists Gallery in Calgary will be conducting a live-streamed tour of the exhibition where you will be able to ask some of the artists (including myself) questions about the show as we take you around it. Click here to sign up for the livestream event!
So there is a new exhibition tour video of the Medium of Exchange – Process show (installed now at the Alberta Society of Artists Gallery) uploaded to my youtube channel. This video was kindly recorded and edited by one of the artists in the show, Jessica Hauser:
You can check out more of Jessica Hauser’s videos here.
On Thursday May 20th the Alberta Society of Artists Gallery in Calgary will be conducting a live-streamed tour of the exhibition where you will be able to ask some of the artists questions about the show as we take you around it. Click here to sign up for the livestream event!
