Lawren P. Harris at Winchester Gallery Modern

Lawren P. Harris was known for the highly precise style and disciplined execution of his war art, portraits and abstractions. His earliest influence was his father, Lawren S. Harris, a prominent member of the Group of Seven. Lawren P. Harris studied at the Boston Museum of fine Arts and at Central Technical School in Toronto, before becoming a teacher himself at the Northern Vocational School, Toronto, and at Trinity College School, Port Hope. Later, Harris joined the war effort and became an official war artist, working for some time alongside Charles Comfort in Italy.

Brian Fisher at Winchester Gallery Modern

Mandalas and Beachscapes
February 12 to March 7, 2015

Opening reception: Thursday, February 12, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Winchester Modern presents previously unseen late work from Canadian artist Brian Fisher.
These evocative mandalas and abstract landscapes were painted during the artist's last years when he lived in Australia. While there is the temptation to fit his oeuvre somewhere within the op art genre, Fisher's intention was always to "go beyond optical gymnastics: it is our relation to space, especially landscape space, that forms the 'subject matter' of the artist's work."

 Fisher's most important Canadian commission was a mural for the Montreal International Airport at Dorval, which has long been regarded as "one of the most successful marriages of art and architecture in Canada."

John Hartman at Winchester Gallery Modern

Winchester Modern, 758 Humboldt Street
 

John Hartman: Hong Kong & Shanghai
November 1 - November 29, 2014
 

Opening reception with artist in attendance:
Saturday, November 1, 2:00 - 4:00pm
 

Performance by the Victoria Society of Chinese Performing Arts.
Chinese pastries and Silk Road Tea.

Rachel Berman - Celebration of Life

William Perehudoff at Winchester Modern

Optimistic Colour

April 5 - 26, 2014 

 This exhibition presents work by celebrated Canadian artist William Perehudoff (1918-2013).  His achievements for Colour Field painting are internationally regarded as being unique, diverse and of high quality.   

Opening Reception:
April 5, 2014, 2:00 – 4:00 pm

 758 Humboldt Street

Herbert Siebner at Winchester Modern

 Herbert Siebner: A Sixty-Year Legacy

Winchester Galleries proudly presents a special exhibition to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Herbert Siebner's arrival in Victoria.

Following the Second World War, this passionate, spontaneous artist found nothing to keep him in Berlin, and decided to come to Canada, "the land of opportunity." Travelling across the country by train with his young family, he didn't stop until he got to Victoria.

It was 1954,  sixty years ago, and Victoria warmly embraced him.

Here, Siebner was able to live the artistic, bohemian life he valued, filled with good friends and outrageous parties. And most importantly, he was able to develop his art from the gentle European watercolours and mythological figurative sgraffitos to the riveting, narrative abstract oils and acrylics.

Siebner came into his own here, due in no small part to his infectious self-promotion, but also to the timely one-man exhibition organized for him at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria by then-director Colin Graham. From that ground-breaking exhibit in 1955, and from many other solo exhibitions and group shows with The Limners over the years, Siebner's work became firmly entrenched in the West Coast canon.

Winchester Modern 758 Humboldt Street

March 8 to 29, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, March 8, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Carole Sabiston at Winchester Modern

Carole Sabiston was born in Harrow, England, and in 1948 immigrated to Canada with her parents. The family took up residence in West Vancouver (1948-52) and then moved to Victoria. Sabiston has continued to live in Victoria except for intervals at UBC, London in Ontario, and Spain. 

In the late sixties Sabiston developed a singular technique of assembling textiles into striking panoplies of colour and form. Layering to achieve depth and reflection, and the reversal of diagonals to create a vigorous dynamic, brought new vibrancy to her work. Another significant breakthrough was her use, from 1979, of the industrial sewing machine.

The works in the Winchester Modern exhibition are abstract composites of tightly stitched black static lines off-set with dynamic vortices of found materials. Through their decorative and once-functional qualities, and occasionally through words on labels, these materials evoke aspects of culture – past and present.

Winchester Modern 758 Humboldt Street

March 8 – April 26, 2014

Opening reception:
Saturday, March 8, 2014, 2 – 4 pm

Charles Gagnon -State Works- at Winchester Gallery Modern

Charles Gagnon

 Estate Works

 Charles Gagnon (1934 -2003), a native Montrealer, studied art in New York from 1955 to 1960 and subsequently taught at Concordia University and at the University of Ottawa.  He was a multi-disciplinary artist whose project (painting, photography, film, sculpture...) has become highly prized and influential.  This work exhibits a Zen-like inclusiveness: a rectangle enlarges and may enlarge again; an image appears cropped but infers another segment; a letter, word, ancient sign, an interpolated photo or a pure geometric form optically and metaphorically expands the visual and cognitive awareness.  There are boundaries and yet no limits.  Gagnon is also known for a greyed palette which leans toward stillness and sometimes acts as a foil to energizing colour.  These factors parallel those found in the paintings of various New York and St. Ives artists.  Charles Gagnon’s mark is a certain humanism expressed exquisitely.  He did not divorce art from life.  This keynote exhibition at Winchester Modern is made possible by the generosity of the Gagnon Estate.

 Opening Reception
Saturday, December 14, 2013   2 - 4 pm

 Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt Street (beside the Marriott)

December 14, 2013 – January 18, 2014

Jeanne Cannizzo at Winchester Gallery Modern

Jeanne Cannizzo is a Victoria, BC artist who works on both paper and canvas. There are strong graphic and expressionistic aspects to her work and the content often deconstructs high-profile events from the news media. Works in this exhibition come from three different series. Small Boys Unit is about the children who were forced to become combatants in the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Northern Waters is her response to the sinking of the ‘Kursk’, a Russian submarine which sank with a crew of 118, in the Barents Sea in 2000. At least 23 survived the explosion and several lived long enough to write final notes of love and farewell to their families. Fear of Flying illustrates some of the ways the artist tries to calm her anxieties about flying, which have been heightened more explicitly since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

- Three Recent Series
@ Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt Street (beside the Marriott)
December 14, 2013 – January 18, 2014
- - Opening Reception
Saturday, December 14, 2013 2 - 4 pm

— at Winchester Gallery Modern .

Rita Letendre at Winchester Galleries Modern

 

Selected Paintings and Paperworks

by Rita Letendre 

Toronto artist Rita Letendre is a recipient of the Order of Canada (2005) and the Governor General’s Award (2010); her work is lauded for structure, light and colour.

 Opening Reception: Saturday October 12, 2 – 4 pm. From 3 pm, distinguished pianist Tzenka Dianova will perform a John Cage composition. 

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts RCA Exhibition at Winchester Gallery

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts RCA Exhibition

June 7 and 8, 2013
held concurrently
at Winchester Modern 758 Humboldt Street
and at 796 Humboldt St.

The Annual General Assembly includes an exhibition of newly elected members’ work, hosted by a local gallery and open to the public. This year, there will be two exhibitions held on June 7 and 8 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Winchester Galleries Humboldt Valley will hold a show of local RCA members' work including Michael Morris, Elza Mayhew, Richard Hunt, Walter Dexter, Ted Harrison, Mary Kerr, Carole Sabiston, Linda Stanbridge, Robert Amos, Harry Stanbridge and Herbert Siebner. Winchester Galleries Modern will exhibit work by the RCA's 2013 inductees including Lynda Gammon, Barbara Paterson and three First Nations artists: Chief Tony Hunt, Clarence "Butch" Dick and Charles Elliott.

Jean McEwen at Winchester Modern

Ric Evans at Winchester Gallery Modern

Geometric Boundaries

 April 6 – 27, 2013

 Toronto artist Ric Evans is widely recognized as one of Canada’s foremost practitioners of abstract painting. His specialty is colour set within a simple geometric framework. The colour and the reduced geometry typically evoke the urban environment. That correspondence is often furthered by tattered edge and rough texture.
 Ric Evans’ work interacts with numerous facets of formalism.  He has, for instance, been inspired by Ellsworth Kelly for simple geometric presentation of pure colour and shapes, Brice Marden for figure-ground relationship, Cy Twombly for elements of movement, Dusseldorf artist Imi Knoebel for shapes and shadows, Swiss artist Olivier Mosset for monochrome, Frank Stella’s Black Paintings for simplicity, geometric muscularity and a matter-of-fact way of painting, Tomma Abts for geometric highlights, shadows, multi-layering and unorthodox shapes, Gerhard Richter for white shapes and Thomas Nozkowski for small scale.

 Opening reception: Saturday April 6, 2013, 2 – 4 pm

 Winchester Modern, 758 Humboldt Street

Ray Meade and John Meredith at Winchester Modern

RAY MEAD / JOHN MEREDITH

FEBRUARY 2 - 23, 2013

Selected Works

Opening reception: Saturday, February 2, 2013   from 2 - 4pm.

758 Humboldt Street (beside The Marriott Hotel)  250-386-2773

Ray Meade  Untitled,1989   acrylic on canvas  36 x 48 inches

John Meredith   Untitled, no.39 VIII, 1993   21.5 x  26.325 inches   red, black & grey ink on paper

Grant Boland at Winchester Galleries Modern

Scuttled

 

 

Opening Reception
Saturday, December 8 , 2012 
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
pianist Tzenka Dianova will perform at 3:00 pm.

 

 

 
Grant Boland graduated in 1994 in Fine Arts from Sir Wilfred Grenfell University in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. He has since come to the fore as an important realist painter receiving much acclaim at the Toronto International Art Fair and at other key venues.
‘Grant Boland: Scuttled’ looks at a Newfoundland as something of an absence of the traditional fisheries and of the human culture attendant upon them. In addition, Boland scuttles his previous style: his long-standing consummate realism does have play but is now mediated by abstracted contour and shape.
These formal elements contribute to the monumentality of the work, as do rich impasto and a signature depiction of dramatic light. Another contributor is narrative. It, however, is typically quiescent, composed and nuanced, it therefore countering the potential for melodrama.

Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt Street (beside the Marriott) 

Linda Stanbridge at Winchester Galleries Modern

Spanish Series # 4

THE SPANISH SERIES

Opening Reception
Saturday, December 8 , 2012
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Linda Stanbridge in attendance
pianist Tzenka Dianova will perform at 3:00 pm.

Linda Stanbridge lives and works in Victoria. Her art practice investigates the optics of spatial orientation through the use of a wide range of materials and process. In her current series, raku-fired ceramic is the exclusive medium.
A visit which Linda Stanbridge made in 2008 to southern Spain (Andalucia) inspired this new series. The area's architecture and geography, together with such paintings as "Guernica" have given rise in her work to new subtleties of tone and balance.
A key to her work is the cerebral transcendent quality imparted by the use of pure geometric optics. Grounded by the earthy texture and colour of the clay, the aesthetics are also informed by art historical reference and high technical ability.
The op art element allows the eye to see two alternating images and may be likened to the involuntary act of breathing. Both phenomena speak of something beyond conscious control or reason. A Zen koan might be evoked and sudden intuitive perception invited.
The titles are not representational but spring from her memory or feeling about various facets of the trip.

  Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt Street (beside the Marriott)

James Gordaneer at Winchester Galleries Modern

" Rebound "

 James Gordaneer

October 6 - 27, 2012

 

 

 

James Gordaneer is important for expressionistic painting in Canada. He has also been very influential as a teacher. He makes things connect, on and off canvas.

In the summer of 2011 Gordaneer became ill, and not until November could he resume the serious production of art. Twenty of the works which he then painted comprise this October 2012 exhibition. 

Gordaneer’s spontaneous method furthers the abstraction of his gestural realism.  A debt is revealed to Abstract Expressionism – especially that of de Kooning and Gorky.  Gordaneer first saw their work in 1959 by which date he had significantly developed under the tutelage of Karl Schaeffer, Jock Macdonald and other notable artists. Teaching art and visiting museums in Europe also contributed to Gordaneer’s development.  

opening reception:
Saturday, October 6, 2012   2 pm – 4 pm


Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt St

Winchester Galleries Fall/Winter 2012

Mark Laver – Rural Disasters - photo review – opening day

Winchester Galleries Modern
758 Humboldt St.
May 12 to June 12, 2012

Jean Paul Riopelle at Winchester Galleries Modern

Opening Reception: Sat. Dec. 10, 2011 

2 to 4 pm 

758 Humboldt St.

Phone. 250 - 386-2773


Watch video of the opening