Opening reception: Saturday, May 6, 2 – 4 p.m
Artist in Attendance
Exhibition dates: May 4 – 30, 2017
Ross Penhall, They’re Over in the Corner, 30″ x 40″, oil on canvas.
Living in the Complexity of an Effort* presents the acclaimed Vancouver-based painter Ross Penhall in an exhibition of selected new works. The large-scale paintings describe the West Coast landscapes of British Columbia and California with the blues, yellows, browns and greens that make the artist’s style so recognizable.
In the works, shadows play at the edge of light– illuminating trees, fields, and mountains in a checkerboard fashion. The paintings throw colour over the landscape like a quilt, softening its edges and smoothing out detail. Penhall calls these images a “reminiscence of what you see,” seemingly perceptual memories of passing glances.
Penhall’s works, and the incredible attention they receive, enter into dialogue with Canada’s long tradition of landscape painting. His view presents a curious dilemma: nature is ordered and sculpted, yet devoid of human presence. These landscapes, softened to near abstraction, exist somewhere between the once-wildly primitive West Coast and our urban reality: a nod to humanity’s ever-changing relationship to the natural environment.
*quote from Janna Malamud Smith’s book An Absorbing Errand
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