I can remember my dreams all the way back to my childhood and now, paying attention to and working with my night dreams has changed the way I see life and my creative process. I am a Mixed Media artist working and living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Using my photographs of everyday life from the mundane to the fantastic as a starting point of raw material I collage them onto a canvas like we use the images from our everyday lives to create our dreams… I use paint as the emotional energy that binds these images into a whole. Then the adventure of discovery begins. Once I have discovered the dream scene, dreamscape or dream mood that resonates for me within each piece I can return to a technique and sense of focus that fine tunes the story. The hardest part and my goal is to work with and never lose any of the original energy, brushstroke and spirit within each piece. If a portrait shows up with one eye there is a reason and I leave it that way. I always try to put ego aside and work as much as possible from the wealth of the creative, unconscious mind, that true nonjudgement part of ourselves, as possible.
I still get butterflies in my stomach every time I work on a piece and wonder where it will lead me next. Nothing is predetermined about my work. An excitement of finding the characters and a sense of place is always present while I am in the creative place. My work is about being curious about life and living and Searching and finding meaning within the Chaos. I love to decode my night dreams and discover the messages from the deep that are revealed. The imagination is filled with unlimited potential to decode, reflect, problem solve and grow. This work is about sharing portals into the imagination that create stories, my stories and your stories and sharing them out into the universe.
Dreaming is an essential part of our lives, learning to decode and use our dreams to understand the chaos of the world around us is a tool. I feel part of my works are a playground for learning to seek out, find and see the world through new lenses. Enjoying the process of searching and finding story. Our stories…Then using these stories to look back at ourselves to better understand ourselves. Every evolving, always changing and forever fascinating. Welcome to the journey….
I use bold color, many layers of paint, and other forms of mixed media to create art that has been called “whimsical, sometimes deep, and always honest.” The layers of paint on the canvas create depth within the painting and symbolically reflect back the many layers of our lives. At the heart of my work is a call to all of us to live unapologetically, with joyful abandon and freedom.
My process involves journaling and meditating before any paint touches the canvas. Afterwards, using my gut/intuition as my guide, I make marks, write, and layer paint while letting go of what the final result may be.
Whether the painting is pure abstract or infused with vintage photography, the work is a bold expression of my voice as an artist and as a woman. The hard-won lessons of life, and sometimes the downright hilarious ones, reveal themselves in my work in unexpected ways. With intuition as my guide crazy, fun, and deep stuff happens on the canvas.
Zoë is an artist in almost every sense of the word. She has been drawing for as long as she can remember, but did not begin painting until she returned to the West Coast. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Upstate NY, she now resides in the Oakland Bay area.
Zoë’s inspirations come from God, life, love, music, and everything in between. She is dedicated to being true to herself, which in-turn, transforms her work into passion on canvas.
“My goal has never been to be different. Most humans are trying to be different, and, as a result, most are actually quite the same. My goal is to be myself, andjust being myself already makes me different. There will never, in all of creation, and throughout time, be anyone like me or you again, so be yourself and love who you are!
As far as what I do, what you see on canvas, I’m calling it art to simplify the means of my expression. These pieces were birthed from the passions of life, living freely, being myself, and loving who I truly am. I use acrylic on canvas to express myself, and I continue to grow with each new piece.
You are not just witnessing art, but pieces of my life’s journey. I look forward to being able to share it with you!”
James Bentley is a Canadian artist who lives and works on the small island L’Île-Perrot, just off Montreal, Québec. He studied and began his career as a freelance illustrator; a practice which gave him a great love for drawing. Anchored in figuration, he now works mainly with acrylic on canvas and acrylic & pastel on paper. Bentley’s current body of work is focused on the ocean, portraits and figure studies. He is always on the search to paint in an inventive open manner.
In my latest work I have shifted to an emphasis on pattern, color, brushstroke and mark making. Moving into an ongoing exploration of my personal experiences through more abstract means of expression.
For the moment I have left the dresses, plants, fruit, animals. I am focusing the essence of my inquiry to the faces and the surrounding color field.
In my work I try to be as honest and true to myself as I can without losing discernment. I aim as best as I can for sincerity, intimacy and openness in my paintings. In them I find the beginning of something that touches the universal. It is a place where others can touch the magic and sensuality that gets exposed in the process.
I think deep inside of us lives a longing to experience a sense of ‘falling in love’. A visceral experience without words. For that to happen, this place needs to be free of irony, social commentary or conceptual humor. I am looking in my work to find the point in which we feel a certain ache – the ache caused by the knowledge that life is full of light and dark, sacred and profane, beauty and ugliness, life and death.
“Making figure and portrait sculpture is really about chasing the shadows and profiles of the sitter. I don’t think about making a ‘successful’ piece when working – in fact I try not to think at all. Instead, focusing intensely on looking at the sitter, I let the work make itself as I try to capture what I am seeing.”
Jess completed an honours degree in art and design at Liverpool University in 1991. Since then she has continued making and learning about art. For the last ten years, her main focus – in both sculpture and painting – is a fascination with the human figure. She believes that we express our unique, personal narratives through body language and, in her figure and portrait work, Jess tries to connect the sitter with the viewer through the energy of her mark-making.
She exhibits annually with Crouch End Open Studios and was an active member of the North London Artists Network until it closed at the end of 2015. She has also exhibited in the New English Annual Open at the Mall Galleries for the last few years. She teaches regular painting and sculpture classes in North London.
I paint characters in waiting rooms or transit zones, and scenes of waiting crowds. My goal is
to paint an impression that insinuates and suggests rather than defines, so the viewer has
the task to search and decide for himself what he or she sees.
My preferred material is acrylic paint, and I really enjoy the process of mixing colors. The
typical process is to dilute my paint with water and add (a) drop(s) of black Chinese ink
rendering toned-down and mostly transparent colors. In my work, I am well aware of the
opaque/transparent properties of the colors, and I use them smartly. However, I have a
strong preference for transparent paint as it gives the opportunity to add many layers and
suggest even more.
Because I love to experiment, I often add collage and photography to my work, but the result
of these experiments always ends as a painting. When I use photography under my paint, it
makes these artworks more realistic, but realism is not what I’m looking for, simplification
and a step towards abstraction is what I’m looking for. When I’m painting, I’m envisioning
that I’m watching a moment of scene with my eyes almost closed so I can remove details but
still capture the essence of the scene and its characters.
I am an artist and a musician from Gibraltar, living and working in London. Within my work I try to explore the human form through the study of individuals whilst hoping to create images which capture the vulnerability and beauty of people. At times I focus on the surrounding landscape and its encompassing attraction, be it man made or crafted by nature. By drawing, painting and printing I use the strength of line as well the power of colour to create images that hold meaning.
The American artist Ellen Gallagher is admired to the point of reverence on the other side of the Atlantic. Her distinctive combination of politics and prettiness has been catnip for collectors and critics alike these last 20 years. For the latter, there is always so much to talk about – her range of references from Moby Dick and Sol LeWitt to Black Power and Detroit techno, her trademark restyling of 50s ads and 60s sci-fi movies, her evident if excessively elusive intellectualism – all appealingly couched, to collectors, in the delicate aesthetic of her paintings and prints.
It is worth knowing about this high regard when visiting Gallagher’s retrospective at Tate Modern. It helps to explain the sheer scale of the event: almost 100 works, many of them multi-part, accompanied by a catalogue of eulogies by some of America’s finest art writers, and all kicked off by a gigantic blown-up reprise of Man Ray’s famous photograph of Matisse sketching an odalisque in harem pants on a couch with Gallagher’s own face pasted on to the model and Sigmund Freud in the role of Matisse.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/05/ellen-gallagher-axme-tate-review
Note1-Painter & Videographer
This investigation comes about after an Atlanta,GA based non-profit Smoke School of Art’s weekly homework assignment and is primarily based on the “Brilliant Ideas” video and the well written review of her retrospective by Laura Cummings. Cummings does an excellent job of sifting through the multiple layers of sentiment and projections heaped unto this mediocre artist that validates Gallagher as the “most recognized African American painter since the nineties”. These notes take the well-articulated points by Cummings and the fodder present in Gallagher’s dialogue and points out the inadequacies that are consistent through Gallagher’s career.
Gallagher’s work makes one think fondly on the kitsch-laiden work of Romare Bearden. Once again this cut and paste mediocre practice of collage is proven to be the breeding ground of knick knack collectibles.
The gridded collage above, Gallagher’s breakthrough piece, is an indicator of her true interest which has nothing to do with painting. No painter’s painter would be satisfied with this attempt at painting. Collage does not operate on the interest of painters who enjoy painting. So why does Gallagher retain “reverence” status as a painter? Cummings answers this question with nods to minimalist artists such as Agnes Martin’s still abstract grid paintings. It is a stretch of the imagination to include this comparison as valid because the success of Martin’s work is due to the primacy of paint. Martin would never cut and paste these transitions.
That distinction may not seem like much of a distinction but Martin never felt the need to move to the violent act of cutting a canvas to apply such a coarse transition as Gallagher. When an artist feels the need to abandon the primacy of a medium to plop down texture it is an indicator of lack of mastery. It is an indicator of an obvious inadequacy. This inadequacy then begs to be overlooked relying heavily on sentiment and the projection of others to overcome it. Without mentioning “minstrels” are these paintings good? No.
A school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme simplification of form, as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary colors, objectivity, and anonymity of style. Also called ABC art, minimal art, reductivism, rejective art.
Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature, or design.
Music A style of music marked by extreme simplification of rhythms, patterns, and harmonies, prolonged chordal or melodic repetitions, and often a trancelike effect.http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Minimalist+art
Gallagher’s rough application is an aversion to minimalist practice, an aversion to Martin, Lewitt, and many others. Again, this comparison to these amount to nothing more than name dropping to force a conversation that is not there. Minimalist seeks to reduce and subtract mediums and ideas to its purest form. Gallagher’s laborious, often clumsy steps, amount to a contrived additive process where emphasis is placed on the quantity of labor not an interest in a stringent pursuit in her praxis.
Note 2.5-sentiment
Prior knowledge for this show. An entire gallery, for instance, is hung with numerous editions of what appear to be pretty much the same work: sheets of lined exercise paper glued to canvases, sometimes lacquered, sometimes painted fetching colours and sometimes featuring racial caricatures of big lips and bug-eyes. These mouths and eyes are always tiny and sometimes so faint as to be spectral, which carries its own meaning. Gallagher describes them as “the disembodied ephemera of minstrelsy”.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/05/ellen-gallagher-axme-tate-review
Cumming’s articulates the above observation of Gallagher’s well. If Gallagher’s work requires prior knowledge of all sorts turns out to be a requisite to be received, then how can she be a great artist? A great resource maybe, like the Dewey decimal system–a way to access library books on several unrelated topics that have minute correlations to each other. Research should be a prominent part of every artist’s practice, but if it is a requirement for the viewer to do the same then that artist has not communicated properly, or it so generic and populous that everyone can create their own narrative. The sprinkling of buzzwords that are racially charged with advertising amounts those unimaginative juxtapositions of surrealists who exploited the indigenous primitive imagery to access their subconscious. This type of practice is just lazy.
This essay continues next month with “Postcolonial Thoughts: Notes on Ellen Gallagher, Part 2.”
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.
CT explores the creative potential of borders, boundaries, difference, and limitation. It's a playground for multiple genres and diverse points of view. And like any good playground, it provides space for more than one person to have a good time. So I have friends here as well, contributing quirky, serious, playful, innovative, eclectic, and imaginative work.
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Melissa
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Artist: Kim Vergil
Creative Thresholds 
