Showing posts with label Heather Keenan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heather Keenan. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Faye Hoffman & Heather Keenan at Martin Batchelor Gallery
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| Opening Reception: Sat. July 28 - 2 to 6 pm |
Friday, November 11, 2011
Politics, sex and a few stops in between by Philip Willey
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| Sandra Doore |
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| GJ Pearson |
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| Heather Keenan |
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| Luis Merino |
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| Tim Schumm |
Government Street was occupied by the People’s Assembly of Victoria on Saturday and I had to pass through protestors to get to Madrona Gallery. Perhaps bankers are worried… as well they should be….but it’s hard to tell how the protests were resonating with the mainstream. The general public appeared sympathetic but it will take more than that for numbers to grow. Most people just seemed mildly curious.Inside the gallery no politics were in evidence. Michael Warren has mounted a show of young artists from Cape Dorset…..but it isn’t quite what you’d expect. Times have changed. The community still makes beautiful carvings and stone-block prints but younger Inuit artists are dealing with modern reality in their own unique way. They may be remote but they are far from unconnected. This is a chance to see fascinating work by a new generation. The challenge for them will be in preserving the mystique.
There is lots of interesting art at View Art Gallery. G.J. Pearson’s whimsical creations are the main feature but there’s work by other gallery artists and guests. It’s called the Toy show and it deserves a long review. I did make a few notes but with so many artists in the show I just didn’t feel up to it.
Then outside Winchester Galleries on Humbolt I spotted somebody who looked just like Luis Merino! Yep it was him alright…..same bushy hair and beard, same twinkle in the eye. I can report that he looks well and so does his recent work, mostly painted in Baja. Anyone familiar with Merino will recognize the elements immediately. There are no great artistic breakthroughs here…the chess pieces are new to me but the women, guitars, bottles are all reassuringly Merino. The colour and vitality are as strong as ever.
And up at the other Winchester Gallery are some dynamic landscapes by Tim Schumm. Dramatic composition and the way he balances light areas with dark give Schumm’s paintings a visual strength not often seen in the landscape genre.
Heather Keenan’s new work at Martin Bachelor Gallery is impressionistic at first sight but she also seems to be searching for the essence of things. In her statement she talks about ‘erasing and building until a storyline emerges’ as if allowing a subconscious almost metaphysical process to take over. There is clearly a debt to Turner here and French Symbolists like Redon and Moreau though Keenan is generally less specific in her subject matter, perhaps wanting to isolate the precise point where the impression becomes abstract much as Monet did in his later work. In one group of paintings, which reminded me of Dore’s illustrations for Dante, figures migrate and gather across the canvas against ethereal backgrounds reflecting what Keenan calls her ‘sense of the universal collective. Ultimately mysterious and unknowable.’ With these new paintings Keenan certainly seems to have struck a rich vein.
Lastly, suffering somewhat from art overload, I found my way into Xchanges where I was confronted by some distorted torsos impaled on chrome poles. A sort of Francis Bacon strip joint you could say. Definite sexual connotations here I thought…but it was probably just my dirty mind (smiley). Fortunately Sandra Doore was there to put me straight. Sandra is very articulate. She didn’t deny the sexuality of the work but that was by no means the whole story. She described the forms as props she uses to illustrate a concept.
Actually several concepts. The title of the show, Horizontal Desires, is inspired by tango dancing. The desire to free oneself from feelings of repression. She sees society as supine, horizontal, easily manipulated by the vertical i.e. the media. Then there’s the consumerism element and the way human sexuality is used to make people buy things. Sex sells. It can also bring down governments.
Doore likes juxtaposing opposites…the serious versus the ridiculous, ugliness versus beauty, pleasure versus pain. She also likes to make people think. From the manipulation of primal instincts to the stitching of weather-proof fabrics….there’s a lot going on here….far more than I can do justice to in a couple of paragraphs.
Nov. 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Heather Keenan at Martin Batchelor Gallery
New Work by Heather Keenan
Opening Saturday, November 5, 2011
2:00 - 6:00 PM
Exhibition continues until Thursday, December 1, 2011
MARTIN BATCHELOR GALLERY
712 CORMORANT STREET, VICTORIA 250-385-7919
OPEN MONDAY - SATURDAY, 10:00am to 5:00pm
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, October 26, 2009
Heather Keenan in "Question Period"
-What is your artistic background?
I received a Diploma in Art and Design at MacEwan College in Edmonton, Alberta and have also taken many drawing and painting classes in San Francisco and Toronto. My artwork is on the covers of academic journals, books and publications. I’ve received a BC Arts Council award, won Best in Show at Sooke Fine Arts and the Winsor & Newton North American Artist's Competition. I am in the collections of the University of Victoria, Manitou Foundation, British Columbia's Children's Hospital as well as The Canada Council and British Columbia Art Banks.
-How do you describe your work?
I use oil pigment sticks as both a drawing and painting tool to create textured ethereal landscapes sometimes filled with figures.
-Who are the living artists you find more interesting?
I love so many living artists, but to name a few - Susan Point, John Marsden, John Felsing, Gerhard Richter, and Harold Klunder.
-Who are the no longer living artists you find most interesting?
I would say J.M.W. Turner, Edward Hopper, and Willem de Kooning
-Should art have a social/political message?
I don't think all art has to have a political message, but I think it's a very important aspect of artmaking and I salute the artists doing this.
-Why do you do art?
I guess I do art because it's always been hardwired in me even as a kid. I have a need to express myself and painting has been it for awhile now, although I've also worked in a number of different mediums. Writing and photography also intrigue me. But for now it's painting, trying to capture some intangible, fleeting force.
Heather Keenan www.hkeenan.com
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