This week I want to talk more about all of the really amazing artists I’ve learned about and met since starting here at Mountain Galleries. Last month I mentioned them here and there and how I am more often than not on the front lines when they arrive for their week of Artist in Residence, but I haven’t really gone into much more depth.
One of the comments I get a lot working here is if I’m in school to study art or art history, and even when I answer with, “No, just history,” people still like to tack “art” onto the front of it. Whatever. If keeps them happy and out of my way…. Anyway, just because my passion lies with facts and dates and people long dead, that doesn’t mean I am not captivated by paintings and sculptures and architectures of times gone by. When I think about my relationship with art I constantly revert back to a character in my favourite Stephen King novel Duma Key who said that her involvement with the art world was like the old saying “if you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”
If you can’t be an artist, be an artistic supporter.
Unfortunately, given my current finances and my starving-student status, I can’t really afford to be an artistic supporter, but that doesn’t stop me from looking.
Over the course of my 3 and a half months here I have gotten to know this collection of artists quite well, even though I haven’t personally met many of them. I have gravitated towards my favourites and have enjoyed watching the trends of the public’s favourites, two groups that more often than not don’t quite overlap. But that’s okay. Beauty, as they so often say, is in the eye of the beholder.
There is a really great mix of talents here at Mountain Galleries; we’ve got everything from hyper-realism, to abstract-realism, to straight-up modernist. Yeah. Fancy art terms. I got em all.
Can you tell I’ve taken art history classes? Yeesh.
Personally, I like pretty much everything, with the exception of whatever you’d call what came out of the 1950’s. Things like Pollock and Van Doesburg just do not do it for me. Sorry. The whole Modernist, Avant-Garde stuff? No thanks, not for this chick. I don’t really think I’m that much of an art snob, but yeah, the old masters? I can get behind that. Michelangelo and Da Vinci, and at the other end of the spectrum Monet and Van Gogh. But before I am an artistic fan, I am a Canadian and Canada has produced some really really great artists over the years. The creme de la creme of the Canadian art world are the Group of Seven, artists active mostly in the 1920s-1930s and who basically created the Canadian style. Meaning: landscapes. It is from these seven that most of the artists promoted by Mountain Galleries draws their influences from, even if they don’t admit it themselves.
My personal favourite top 3 here in the gallery that I have loved since before I knew their names are as follows:
- Gail Johnson
- Randy Hayashi
- Charlie Easton
Gail Johnson tops my list because it really was love at first sight. Her works are dominated by bright, larger than life flowers in the most vibrant colours. Her’s is the most abstract of my top 3, but in a way that reminds me of my favourite classic painter, Vincent Van Gogh.
Randy Hayashi is what I consider to be “abstract realist” in his styling. Basically what I mean by this is his works are dominated by colours and shapes that blend together in a way that makes it very obvious it isn’t a straight photograph, but they’re realistic enough to still be able to tell what you’re looking at.
Charlie Easton is the happy middle between the other 2. All 3 use really bright colours in their works, but Charlie works without what I think of borders. He utilizes sweeping brushstrokes and random dabs of contrasting colours to make the most magnificent lake scenes I have ever seen. Not that those are the only things he does, but they are by far my favourites.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both Gail and Charlie through our artist in residence program this summer and they are responsible for some of the brightest spots of my work life. They are both supremely happy people who are an absolute joy to be around and I made a point of making up excuses to wander up and hang out with them. I am quite sad that I won’t get a chance to meet Randy, but apparently I have to go back to school the week he’s here. Who decided that?! So uncool.
Just like my previous Co-op job I have learned a huge amount about a very specific selection of Canadian art and artists, this time around though I’ve been brought up to the modern day and I am very much looking forward to seeking out the names I’ve come to love as I move around this fantastically odd country of mine.
this was here all along 