Anne Bertoin with Solo Show at Public Gallery in Montreal

From February 5 to March 1, 2009, Anne Bertoin has a solo show at the Galerie d'art d'Outremont (known as GAO), a public art gallery in Montreal. Works will be shown from several different periods, including works on loan from collectors. Bertoin has had two shows with Craig Scott Gallery, the first called Fractured Visions in January 2007 and the second a joint show with Ron Eady, Trap / Elusion, which has just ended. The address of Galerie d'art d'Outremont is 41, ave. St-Just, Outremont and its number (514) 495-7419.

EXHIBITION REMINDER: Don Russell and Amir Shingray, SNOW - Nov 27/08 to Jan 18/09

On November 27, 2008, a two-person show called Snow opens, with gallery artists, Don Russell and Amir Shingray. Each has previously had solo shows at the gallery, Russell's Elements of Memory (Fall 2006) and Shingray's Khartoum (Winter 2007).

Russell came to Guelph from a Newfoundland childhood that included camping in snow drifts as high as himself while Shingray came to Toronto from eastern Sudan where snow was almost beyond imagination. Each has studied the (surprisingly modest) place of snowscapes in Canadian painting. For Snow, each has produced work that will forge new paths in connecting art, winter, and what it means to be Canadian.

Russell's work for the show will be an entirely new series of black and white encaustic painting on paper, while Shingray, also with a markedly new series, works in acrylic and ink on canvas.

Scott Waters on CBC's The Current on November 11

Scott Waters is part of a panel discussion on art and war tomorrow on The Current. he is joined by Gertrude Kearns and Allan Harding Mackay, and the interview will be conducted by The Current's host, Anna Maria Tremonti. Following the live airing of The Current interview, an audio track of the interview can be accessed at "11/11/2008: War Artists" at the following URL (click here).

Waters showed with Craig Scott Gallery this past spring in a highly successful show, Time Heals All Wounds, in which 14 works were placed and for which there was favourable critical coverage from Now, The National Post, CBC's Q, Eye Weekly, and Toronto Life.










Waters is part of a major war art exhibition that will travel the country soon (we will let you know more later), and is producing works for a second show (provisionally called Capricorn I) with Craig Scott Gallery currently being discussed for early 2010. Reproduced here are four works that remain from the show from six months ago, all of which are extremely strong works; all can be viewed at the gallery. The two middle works are each small works of 8 x 10 inches.

Greg Angus and Thomas Ackerman team up with top East King East chefs Kennedy and Guitard

Greg Angus (see images here along with images below) and co-exhibitor Thomas Ackerman are holding a unique exhibition in überchef Jamie Kennedy’s new food complex in a lane just off King Street East (almost facing Ritchie’s Auction House), 2 Gilead Place. The exhibition runs November 14, 15 and 16 and proceeds go to support the New Leaf Yoga Foundation, which is a charity that brings Yoga to at-risk and incarcerated youth across Canada. Works can be viewed 7-10 PM on Friday and Saturday, November 14 and 15, and 10-1:30 on Sunday, November 16.

Admission to the exhibition is free, but each day also comes with a special opportunity. On the Friday and Saturday evenings (7-9 PM) two great chefs from the East King East district (as I call it) are preparing tasting menus with a complimentary glass of wine. Jamie Kennedy is on deck on Friday night and Constance Guitard of Weezie’s (corner of King East and Power – a favourite place for meals after gallery openings) is on deck Saturday evening. Either evening is only $40, plus you get to view the artworks of Angus and Ackerman, two very talented artists. Contact Kalie at sumach@rogers.com or 416.214.9742 by November 10 to buy a ticket for one or both evenings.

On Sunday the 16th, there are two BYOM (Bring your own mat) Yoga sessions, detailed in the evite image reproduced above. $30.

Zachari Logan receives MFA

Readers will know we have been offline for a couple weeks. I was in Spain and am now in LA, and it proved harder than I thought to get Internet access when I was in Spain at times when I had time to upload new posts. So, expect a flurry of new posts to gradually bring me back to an average of a post a day.

First up, Zachari Logan, who has just received his MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Above is his invitation card for his Graduate Thesis Exhibition, which has attracted much attention. The photo is of one of his very recent paintings. A couple pieces look destined for public gallery collections. Zachari also has a major solo show of his drawings coming up in Paris in January.

For those who love his work, now is the time....:)

Below is the image without the e-vite type. It is called "Mouth Breather" and is 58 x 60 inches.

Email on Anne Bertoin from visitor at opening

The opening on Thursday evening for Anne Bertoin and Ron Eady's TRAP / ELUSION show was a buzzing affair. Those attending took to the works of both artists and enjoyed discussing the connections between the artists' styles and themes. Most importantly, both artists create works with double depth -- both of image and of meaning -- and pairs and groups of visitors could be seen throughout the evening in front of one painting after another discussing their responses. This really is a show worth attending. Don't let it slip by before you realize. Because we had a week-long preview period, this show concludes in three-weekends time, on October 26.

Below is an email that a visitor sent the morning after attending the opening on Anne Bertoin's work:

Anne Bertoin paintings are huge and vast. i wish i could shrink myself to make them larger. or walk around inside them. Her paintings are the bomb! Past and future abandoned at the same time.

Come experience them and the enigmatic beauty of Ron Eady.

Anne Bertoin's "Reichstag en Quebec" for the Trap/Elusion exhibition

Three more works have been finalized for Anne Bertoin's side of the Trap / Elusion exhibition with Ron Eady (Oct 9 opening; Oct 1 - 8 preview period). I will post them one by one over the next few days. The first posted a few days ago was "Spock" (28 x 28 inches). Posted below is "Reichstag en Quebec" (48 x 36 inches).

The Life and Times of Istvan Kantor, on September 25

One of the most iconic of anti-authoritarian performance and installation artists that Canada (and Hungary) has ever produced, Istvan Kantor, opens with his new exhibition, The Life and Times of Istvan Kantor, on September 25 at 7pm at Fountain Gallery (652A Queen West, entrance off Palmerston). The exhibition runs until October 5. At both the opening on September 25 and on Nuit Blanche (Oct 4) also at 7pm, Kantor will engage in a performance.

Many will know Kantor for his action-art interventions in various museums around the world from Cologne to Montreal to New York to Toronto to Ottawa: Blood Campaign. His most recent action was an unsolicited gift to the AGO in 2005, following which the Art Gallery of York University gave Kantor a show of his unique and compelling "robotics" installation-performance art.

In 2004, Kantor won a Governor-General's Award for the Visual Arts, the most coveted award for an established Canadian artist apart from the Sobey (although the Sobey is limited artists under 40) and perhaps just below the honour of representing Canada at the Venice Biennale. Click here for a glorious photo of Kantor with then Governor-General Clarkson and John Ralston Saul.

Anne Bertoin's "Spock" for the Trap/Elusion exhibition

Three more works have been finalized for Anne Bertoin's side of the Trap / Elusion exhibition with Ron Eady (Oct 9 opening; Oct 1 - 8 preview period). I will post them one by one over the next few days. The first is the 70 x 70 cm "Spock," below:

Latest Ron Eady painting for "Trap/Elusion" show

Ron Eady has just completed one of the final paintings for the upcoming "Trap/Elusion" show with Anne Bertoin. The work is an encaustic on panel and called "The Hive." It is 48" x 48".

Ron Eady's "Sarah's Web" in Varley Art Gallery Face Forward Exhibition

The Varley Art Gallery has just opened an intriging and important group exhibition called Face Forward - Contemporary Portraiture: Curator's Choice (September 12 - November 9, 2008; Varley Art Gallery, 216 Main St., Unionville, Tel: 9054779511), curated by Katerina Atanassova. The exhibition features just shy of 20 established and emerging artists, and includes Ron Eady's Sarah's Web, a 60 x 40 inch encaustic on panel (above), which was acquired by the Varley after being shown at Craig Scott Gallery. Eady's next show, with Anne Bertoin, opens in early October (opening reception, Oct 9,6-9 PM): Trap / Elusion.

Below is another Eady portrait currently available in the gallery: "Branded No 7", 20 x 20 inches, encaustic on panel.

Making up for lost time: new works by Ron Eady for "Trap / Elusion" show

I missed two days of the "daily" blog due to being a little under the weather. Regrets, all. To make up for lost time, enjoy a series of new images of works just completed by Ron Eady for his joint show with Anne Bertoin (opening reception, October 9, 6-9 PM) called Trap/Elusion. The works are on preview October 1-8 at the gallery.

Upcoming painting exhibitions: Vignette - Christian McLeod's "Bourgeois Spider II"

"Paint is water and stone, and it is also liquid thought." - James Elkins, What Painting Is (New York: Routledge, 2000)

Above is the just-completed Christian McLeod, "Surfacing under the bourgeois spider II", 48"x 36", oil on canvas, one of the works in his upcoming Further Unmanned Strategies exhibition.

Final Don Russell largescale painting from Water Meditations series placed

The last available largescale painting from Don Russell's "Water Meditations" series has just been placed. Above can be seen "January 9, 2005" (56 x 80 inches, oil on canvas) which now has a home with a Toronto collector. Other works in the series have found their way into other important collections including that of the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre of the University of Guelph and (see below) the National Capitol Commission's Canadiana Fund.

This series is aptly named as Russell's paintings have a calm-inducing serenity to them. Their three-dimensionality also draw you into the works to the point that you imagine you are either standing on the edge of a vessel or the very edge of a shore, or, in a more fantastical mode, flying like a seabird just above the water surface. While Russell's current work has taken him firmly landward with a new series of paintings being prepared for his two-person "Snow" exhibition with Amir Shingray (end of November 2008 to mid-January 2009), he will be available for commissions of new "Water Meditations" work once the "Snow" works have been completed for the upcoming show.

The above "January 5, 2005" work is very representative of the style of work in the series, although each work is remarkably different even as it is clearly of one kind with the others. The occasional work in the series is a radical departure from the others, perhaps most notably "Singing Sands" (58 x 75 inches, oil on canvas) reproduced below. The Canadiana Fund acquired this work after it was shown as the centrepiece at Craig Scott Gallery in Russell's Elements of Memory show in fall 2006. Observe the marvellous cross-over in the imagery of rippling sand under the surface of shallow water and the furrows of a cerebral cortex.

Zachari Logan's "Wrong Team"

As the Canadian men's baseball team lost their fourth game in a row by a single run at the Olympics, a completely random process of association suggested to me that today might be a good day to post Zachari Logan's super painting, "Wrong Team" (72" x 48", oil on canvas). It will soon be one of the centrepiece's of Logan's MFA graduation exhibition at the University of Saskatchewan (but is available to make the trip back to Toronto or anywhere else in the world). The work has already been reproduced in Border Crossings, viewed by many as one of the best art magazines in the world, in a one-page mini-feature in the magazine's August 2007 PAINT issue. If you don't get Logan's metaphorical title, shoot me an email.

Sometime in the next month or so we expect to announce Logan's participation with his drawings in two shows, one group and one solo, in continental Europe over the next six months. Now is the time to acquire some of his drawings, as we expect the currently low-side prices to rise substantially for each of these shows.

Literarture: Arturo Perez-Reverte's THE PAINTER OF BATTLES

Every now and then, I will let another interest (literature) take centre stage in the blog. I have three sub-genres in which I do some collecting and as much reading as I can manage -- legal fiction; espionage novels; and art-related fiction. For this purpose, obviously it will be art fiction that I will be recommending here and there. This first time around it is Arturo Perez-Reverte's THE PAINTER OF BATTLES (in translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, Random House, 2008; originally published in Spanish by Alfaguara in 2006). The publisher is correct, in my view, to refer to it as the Spanish writer's "most accomplished novel to date," at least from the total of five of his works I have read. His books are always intellecual thrillers at one level or another, and the Painter of Battles can be counted as one as well. That said the suspense dimension is a very very simple single question, and the essence of the novel is a meditation. It is very much in the tradition of the philosophical novel. Reviewers have tended to identify the philosophical reflection as being about the nature of cruelty and humans' seemingly infinite capacity for evil, while missing the parallel meditation about the character of (primarily documentary) photography and of painting in relation to the expression of moral truths. The central character in the book is a retired photographer of war who has turned to a mammoth mural inside an old lighthouse in a quest to express something his celebrated war photos never quitre seemed to get. There is much intertwined discussion of war and art, bolstered by evident art criticism and art history research and thought on the part of Perez-Reverte, which is entirely successful, I think, in raising important questions and prompting meaningful reflection on the part of the reader on possible answers. Fittingly, the novel ends with something of a puzzle for the reader as to what insights the central characters have gained and an arguably open-ended resolution to the 'what will happen' suspense question. In some sense, the novel sends a self-referential signal with its tantalizing ending: just where does literature and in particular fiction stand in relation both to conveying the nature of barbarity as contrasted to photography and painting and to reaching for moral 'truth.' In interesting ways, within the field of literature or more generally writing, The Painter of Battles presents a parallel structure within the life of Perez-Reverte, the war journalist (1973-1994) turned novelist (1986+), as is raised by Faulques, the war photographer turned painter of battles: where does fiction stand in relation to non-fiction, or more specifically reportage, in the search for understanding and moral truth. If you are looking for fast-paced suspense, you will find the Painter of Battles too "slow" as this otherwise-useful BookReporter.com review did. But, if you are looking for excellent writing (Perez-Reverte's best yet) with, in my view, a good balance between philosophical reflection and forward movement, then this book is highly recommended.

Feature Story on Christian McLeod on Magazine Stands Now

A Quebec-based art magazine called Magazinart, on the scene there for 20 years, has just hit the stands with its summer issue. In the bilingual tradition of this magazine, key articles appear in both French and English in two parts of the magazine. And so it is that we are happy to report that an article by John Norris and Noel Meyer has been included both in English - "Landscapes in Modern Time", pp 116-118 -- and in French -- "Paysages des temps modernes", pp 68-70. Some nine images are repduced, including three that will be in McLeod's next show at Craig Scott Gallery -- Further Unmanned Strategies, which opens October 30. These are the 48" x 96" "The Conversation" (upper right), the 66" x 66" "Charing Cross" (below), and the title piece for the show, the 60 x 48" "Further Unmanned Strategies" (below right).

We will link in a later post to the full text of the article, which is heavily composed around an interview with McLeod in which he offers (insightful) insights about his work. I reproduce one paragraph below that helps orient the newcomer to McLeod's work:

Like many artists his style is difficult to pin down, certainly abstract, but also at times representational and loaded with both political and aesthetic content. "I think it is an extension of the abstract impressionists but it has gone further than that. I am also heavily influenced by David Milne, the Canadian painter, his whites and his sense of landscape."

In terms of McLeod's interactions with art and artists that have come before him, he is quoted as saying:

"I really try to look at art and its history and see where things have come from and try not to live just looking at my own art."

Amen to that. On the Craig Scott Gallery website, in a mini-essay, I also comment on this quality of McLeod's work:

Christian McLeod is a painter who is completely secure in his own skin, not duped by art-world fetishizing of the new and confusing of the new with the important. He is aware of his forebearers, including a particular call on his soul of both the Canadian landscape tradition, the Canadian (perhaps primarily Québécois) abstract tradition, and also Aboriginal traditions. In any given work, he may be in conversation with Canadian artistic ancestors like a Riopelle (e.g. Transformer”), a Borduas (so brilliantly echoed while arguably being surpassed in McLeod’s “Particles” series paintings), a Thompson, a Morriseau, or a Jackson. But his influences cannot but be – and are – global: as noted by [Gary Michael] Dault, one can in some pieces discern echoes of New York or Paris ‘School’ adherents like Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, da Silva or de Stael; or, for that matter, discern the spirit of van Gogh (e.g. Burning Studio) or of ancient cave paintings (as commented on by Martin Mills in relation to the work Breaking Apart).

The magazine article also references new figurative work by McLeod, notably Warholian portraits of Tommy Douglas. The triptych "Tommy Clement Douglas" is currently on display at the gallery. More on this body of work in a future post.

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If interested in knowing more about McLeod's work, have a look at Gary Michael Dault's essay on McLeod's work written for the Craig Scott Gallery catalogue during McLeod's Ascending Language exhibition of June 2007. You can read that essay at: HERE. From there you can link to McLeod's Artist's Page and the Exhibition Page for that show.