The 5 to watch. Those who paint.

This is a weekly list I’ve decided to do for fun. It is a list of 5 things, persons, events, or places that I think are worth watching … some probably from a safe distance. To make things easier and less contensious the list is alphabetical.

This weeks list is about 5  island artists who really know how to swing a brush, and these 5 are in my opinion among the most interesting in their diverse use of paint.

The descriptions below are drawn from descriptions on their websites, or their gallery websites.

1. Donald Andrus   writes: “My paintings are about the sensory experience of abstract principles. I want the viewer to be as intimately involved as possible with the paintings. The paintings are made for an “aggressive” viewing eye, one not content to simply re-create the processes involved in their making, but more importantly, to create a heightened sense of the act of seeing: the eye sees itself in the act of seeing. At that level of exchange the viewer and the painter can share a similar experience of the art itself so that the abstraction in my art becomes a bridge, rather than a barrier to understanding abstract painting.”

2. Brian Burke  is one of Canada’s foremost figurative painters. He was named Royal Canadian Academy in the spring of 2003 and has been the recipient of much critical acclaim.
Burke’s work is in collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Burke studied at Holland Collage and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Brian Burke has been called ‘wickedly funny’ by Toronto Art Critic Peter Goddard.

3. Joan Cullen  About the artist: Joan Cullen has a Licence and a Master’s in Aesthetics from the University of Paris I, La Sorbonne and a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton University, Ottawa. She has been a practicing artist since 1974 and works primarily in ink on paper and large format oils on linen. Her flight from monoculture has given rise to long séjours outside of Canada, notably in France, Colombia, Kenya, Tunisia and Thailand. Returning to Prince Edward Island in 1999 has allowed her to explore in depth the formal geography that has oriented the wanderings. In 2000, New Brunswick filmmaker Monique Leblanc made a film about the creative work of Joan Cullen and Herménégilde Chiasson, called Painted Poetry, the first in a series of films about Canadian artists that has been aired on Vision TV and CBC. Cullen exhibits her work regularly both in Canada and abroad and a large work, Points cardinaux, can be viewed at the Atlantic Technology Centre (ATC) in Charlottetown.

4.Hans Wendt Hans Wendt was born in Nova Scotia but grew up in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. After completing one year at OCA in Toronto, and some travels and several years on the West Coast, he landed back in PEI, and now lives in Millvale. For about ten years Hans has been painting with watercolours, and has exhibited at the Art Guild in Charlottetown three times, and in Port Townsend, Washington in 2004.

5.Damien Worth  “My current work uses allegory as a means to investigate contemporary social, ecological, and political dilemmas. Concerned with where, how, and why we live in certain locales, I am interested in the concepts surrounding our visual relationship with both natural and manufactured landscapes. Through a multidisciplinary art practice that is focused in painting, I employ a variety of materials, processes, and experimental techniques to present scenarios of dislocation. I am interested in presenting visual situations that are usually transitional in form: aftermaths that are constantly arising and subsiding, always being renewed in the constellation of their parts. Locational objects are pulled apart and re-negotiated in space, ridding form of its sense of containment, separateness and isolation. Critical in nature, my work explores “the act of looking”, as well as the institutional structures that support “how we look” in visual arenas.”

If you like this list check out my other 5 to watch lists. Next  Previous