April 2015 at the Elaine Fleck Gallery "LIGHT SHOW" by Amy Shackleton - Gravity Painter - Sustainable Future Visionary!

SHOW STATEMENT:

This new series of work is inspired by colour and brightness—the visual sensation produced by light. Light Show could refer to a natural occurrence (like a sunset or colourful sky) or an artificial display (like festive or urban lights). Everyday, we rely on a balance of both—and as solar technologies continue to emerge the division is blurred. Sunlight is a key ingredient in sustainable building projects. Drawing inspiration from the visible light spectrum (all the colours of the rainbow) I explore the beauty and energy of both natural and artificial light in California, New York and Toronto.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

With my work I aim to stimulate dialogue and propose new possibilities for co-existence between man and the environment. My paintings are intended to portray urban life at its best, demonstrating ways that we can work with nature rather than against it. I explore continually evolving approaches to preserving our environment, living more efficiently and using fewer natural resources. My art suggests how we can implement innovative solutions for city planning and development with minimal impact on surrounding habitats. I developed a unique technique to complement my themes. I don’t use paintbrushes—I drip paint with squeeze bottles to build layers of organic lines (by spraying water and rapidly spinning each canvas) and straight lines (using a level). As in real life construction, the architectural aspects of my work are calculated, measured and controlled in order to assure precise locations of each line. As in nature, the environmental elements are more spontaneous, unpredictable and liquid.

"INNOVATION" New Work by Harrison Taylor and New Work by Jacqueline Veltri.

Harrison Taylor combines photography, traditionally the purest form of representational art, with his inventive processes of manipulating materials such as paints, wax and pigment in order to draw out organic patterns. His presentation on multi-layers of plexi adds yet another dimension. His newest work achieves an innovative abstraction that is as chaotic and organized as the universe itself. Harrison is continually challenging the conventional 'limitations' of art media. 

Jacqueline Veltri’s newest oil paintings of handsome antique timepieces immediately pull the viewer into experiencing a wonderful sense of drifting back and forth between hyper-realism and the imaginative composition of the artist. 

"Under-Texting"

Marcel Guldemond is a breath of fresh air; his use of traditional oil techniques combined with his illustration style makes his work a fun, unique, experience for all. His recent series is titled “Under-Texting” it depicts many storylines by contrasting brightly shaped comic book panels inside the golden glow of dusk, suggesting a larger narrative that the viewer can further explore.  

Marcel Guldemond lives in Ottawa, Ontario and is constantly inspired by the beautiful Canadian landscape. Marcel takes inspiration from Northern Ontario towns all the way to Parka Expeditions. His diverse work will be showcased in the month of February at the Elaine Fleck Gallery.  

Artist Statement 

Undertexting describes a new art making process I've developed, as well as the idea that we

as human beings use stories to understand everything in our lives; that the cultural context of

everything we've read and watched and listened to forms the underlying context of almost

every moment that we live.

One could also say that undertexting is about the relativity of meaning, that all meaning is only

ever understood within a cultural context, and how that cultural context is formed by the

stories we consume. [One could also say that it's about how the background context of how

we understand things is often a jumble, but that might just be a reflection of the disarray in my

own mind.]

As a art making process, Undertexting starts with a layer of torn photocopies of pages from

my favourite books, mostly novels, that I paste on to the panel over top of the original

drawings. I then paint on top of that with thin layers of paint (much thinner than I'd been using

in the past) allowing you to see some of the underlying text, making that cultural context more

explicit and part of the visual story.

Undertexting is a new art making process for me not only because of the underlying layers of

text, but also because I've completely changed how the paintings look: I've begun to explicitly

incorporate things from my background in comics. These include the use of inset panels,

which I'm using to show key scenes in the stories the paintings are describing, and the use of

more abstract line and flat colour based backgrounds, which set the emotional contexts and

the settings for the stories they tell.

When people would ask me what my paintings were about before Undertexting, I usually said

that they were scenes from imaginary novels, or what it felt and looked like to be in an

imaginary novel. These new paintings that make up Undertexting are, with their underlying

layers of text and their use of visual storytelling elements from the comics medium, even more

about scenes from, or being inside of, imaginary novels. I hope you enjoy them.

- Marcel Guldemond

Building on the Edge

Amy Shackleton's newest paintings are inspired by her recent road trip through the American Southwest. For over two weeks Amy explored breathtaking scenery in Zion National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, Lake Powell, Horseshoe Bend, Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon. 

Amy states, "While hiking through the Grand Canyon, from rim to rim, I couldn’t help but imagine a city within its walls. In this series, I perch buildings from Toronto, Vancouver and Las Vegas atop canyons from Utah, Arizona and Nevada."

Artist Statement  
         I envision post-industrial worlds where healthy sustainable relationships exist between man and the environment. My paintings are intended to portray urban life at its best, demonstrating ways that we can work with nature rather than against it. I explore continually evolving approaches to preserving our environment, living more efficiently and using fewer natural resources. My art suggests how we can implement innovative solutions for city planning and development with minimal impact on surrounding habitats.

         This synthesis of ideas is manifested in how I paint. I apply paint with squeeze bottles and spin each canvas to build layers of straight and organic lines. As in real life construction, the architectural aspects of my work are calculated, measured and controlled in order to assure precise locations of each line. As in nature, the environmental elements are more spontaneous, unpredictable and liquid. I achieve these effects by dripping paint, using a level, spraying water and rapidly spinning each canvas.  

October 2014 - "Collision Yangon" by Andrew Rowat

All photographs for "Collision Yangon" were meticulously shot on 4x5 or 8x10 inch negatives. 

"Shooting only large format film (4x5 and 8x10) I wanted to use a tool that was physically aligned with the character and age of what I was photographing. The large format process is a physically demanding enterprise, but ultimately yields negatives suitable for extreme enlargement while maintaining rich detail." -Andrew Rowat

Elaine Fleck culled through hundreds of Andrew's large format images in order to curate ten photographs that go directly to the heart of the story - "Collision Yangon", at the Elaine Fleck Gallery for the month of October. 

Andrew Rowat’s portraits have appeared in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, his travel work regularly appears in Conde Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure, and his architecture and lifestyle work finds its way into the pages of Wallpaper, Monocle, and Dwell. His profile features have appeared in Esquire, and GQ.

Andrew Rowat’s fine art is represented by the Elaine Fleck Gallery.

- I first visited Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in Myanmar (formerly Burma) in the Fall of 2012 while on assignment for WSJ, the style magazine for the Wall Street Journal. I was charged with capturing the colonial architecture in the city and was immediately struck by some of the similarities between Yangon and Shanghai – a city I had called home for almost eight years.

I had moved to Shanghai in 2002 just as China was really starting to explode on to the world scene – it was becoming an economic powerhouse, its art was starting to be collected seriously, and the architectural projects that were getting the green light couldn’t have been built anywhere else in the world. It was a wild and wooly time for the next eight years as I lived at this intersection of change – with the world coming to China’s doorstep and China playing the role of self-assured debutante on the global stage. 

Whole neighbourhoods were razed in the name of progress and development as architecturally unique districts with all of their attendant history were lost. When I first arrived in Shanghai there were three subway lines, and when I left eight years later there were 13. It was a breakneck pace and one that has slowed little today.

My experience in Shanghai sensitized me to the importance of capturing the essence of a place before it is completely paved over.

To be sure, Yangon is not Shanghai, nor will it ever be, but here you have two cities on a river. Two cities with a deep British Colonial past. Two cities whose river banks still bears testament to their former British rulers with hulking grand buildings. Twenty years ago Shanghai’s Pudong riverbank was still rice paddies, whereas today it is the financial heart of the city and home to a forest of some of the tallest buildings in the world. Yangon’s opposite bank is still undeveloped with rice paddies stretching as far as the eye can see and a primitive ship building and repair operation dominating the landscape. You will find no buildings above two stories. This is a city on the cusp – the change is upon it.

Burma itself is a country of collisions: transitioning from 50 years of dictatorship (1962-2011) to some sort of hybrid democracy; a pre-dominantly Buddhist country driven by deep religious differences and sectarian violence, often perpetrated against Muslims. It is a country that is a proxy battleground for China, Japan, and the US – a modern day Great Game playing out in South East Asia. Its neighbours in the region are also clamouring for a piece of the development pie – Singapore is looking to build office towers, Vietnam has broken ground on new shopping malls, and China has designs on just about everything.

It is within this context of flux that I felt compelled to offer my own commentary on this city in the middle of the maelstrom.
Shooting only large format film (4x5 and 8x10) I wanted to use a tool that was physically aligned with the character and age of what I was photographing. The large format process is a physically demanding enterprise, but ultimately yields negatives suitable for extreme enlargement while maintaining rich detail.

The Burmese people are striding forward into this still unformed future both caught in the slipstream of their neighbours’ 
progress while trying to chart their own unique path.

Yangon itself translates as ‘End of Strife’ and I hope that as the 2015 parliamentary elections loom that the strife which this country has experienced for half a century will be at an end – ushering in a new era of renewal built on the bones of it. - Andrew Rowat

Published on Oct 4, 2014

A brief explanation of Andrew Rowat's "Collision Yangon" project, starting from 2012-2014. The project is ongoing, but the video delves into the different forces that are at play in Myanmar and Yangon specifically today in advance of the 2015 Parliamentary elections. The project started from,from a commission to photograph colonial architecture for the Wall Street Journal's magazine WSJ and evolved from that point.

Video shot by Lee Satkowski, Andrew Rowat, and Algirdas Bakas. Music by Algirdas Bakas, editing by Jia Li.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX6giJ6DdiI

The September Show featuring Harrison Taylor, Rhiana Sneyd and Beverley Abramson.

Harrison Taylor using various media including drawing, painting and photography has created new works rich with organic shapes extracted from a multi disciplinary process. Included are six innovative multi-dimensional pieces framed in Italian wood, this is a must see!

Rhiana Sneyd has painted large new architectural landscapes that convey the drifting warm hues glowing at dusk played against the descending cool darkness of night.

Beverley Abramson has new limited edition photographs from her recent series “Environment”. 

“Bold textures and colours, sights, sounds and shadows within diverse and mysterious culture are poignant moments that are unified by the celebration of innate beauty found in nature and humankind.” - Beverley Abramson

The July Show at the Elaine Fleck Gallery Featuring Painter Sumi Zushi

"I find peace in nature and a purpose in painting.  I am dedicated to exploring the qualities of landscapes in oil. I am inspired by nature, by the complexity of light, colour and pattern that it creates, and I strive to capture these ephemeral qualities in my work. It is these colour patterns, the rhythm of light and shadow and the glowing afternoon sunlight that I translate. I express with intensity, the immediacy of my experience within the landscape. My brushwork can be aggressive, stemming from a physical reaction to the setting in which I am working. I am inspired by different environments to experiment with different painting techniques and this challenges me as an artist." Sumi Zushi

Sumi has just returned from Japan with Eight New Paintings painted during the country's iconic Sakura (cherry blossom) season. Sumi's work evokes the masterful french impressionist Monet, yet with a fresh contemporary edge that is unmistakable. 

"Hanami" (flower viewing) is the centuries-old practice of picnicking under a blooming sakura (Cherry Blossom) or ume (plum blossom) tree. The custom is said to have started during the Nara Period (710–794) when it was ume blossoms that people admired in the beginning. But by the Heian Period (794–1185), cherry blossoms came to attract more attention and hanami was synonymous with sakura. The custom was originally limited to the elite of the Imperial Court, but soon spread to samurai society and, by the Edo period, to the common people as well. Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune 1716 - 1745 planted areas of cherry blossom trees to encourage this. Under the sakura trees, people had lunch and drank sake in cheerful feasts.

Every year the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the public track the sakura zensen (cherry blossom front) as it moves northward up the archipelago with the approach of warmer weather via nightly forecasts following the weather segment of news programs. The blossoming begins in Okinawa in January and typically reaches Kyoto and Tokyo at the end of March or the beginning of April. It proceeds into areas at the higher altitudes and northward, arriving in Hokkaidō a few weeks later. Japanese pay close attention to these forecasts and turn out in large numbers at parks, shrines, and temples with family and friends to hold flower-viewing parties. Hanami festivals celebrate the beauty of the cherry blossom and for many are a chance to relax and enjoy the beautiful view.