Exhibition Posters
The Gallery has numerous beautiful high quality exhibition posters dating back over a decade of solo, two person and group shows it has hosted during that time. These high gloss posters are available for purchase for $5.00 each or 5 for $20.00.
They include local artists Manfred Buchheit, Bill Rose, national artists David Bolduc, Sheila Gregory, Harold Klunder, Michael Smith, Kevin Sonmor, and Peter von Tiesenhausen and international artists James Bohary, Nasco Pelev.
As well larger posters of Il\'s sont dix-huit du Quebec, Water, Woman, Humans , Waiting for Your Tongue and other group shows are also available.
Lamination is available for $50 and we ship world wide at cost.
The Gallery will donate a range of posters to any school that wishes them for their art programs.
DATE: December 5, 2011
Painting Between Two Worlds
Painting between two worlds: Artist Rimi Yang captures duality on canvas
BY MICHAEL GRAUPMANN
12.05.11 | 02:44 pm
Rimi Yang is an artist and philosopher, bravely documenting life’s unknowns.
East and West, classic and modern, familiar and abstract—the liminal spaces in between are where Yang finds the inspiration for her complex, emotional paintings that are finding homes in the collections of galleries in New York, New Mexico, California, Florida and Georgia, and with collectors like actress Halle Berry.
As the only gallery in Texas to feature Yang’s work in 2011, The Russell Collection Fine Art Gallery welcomed the humble artist to their gallery Saturday for an exhibition that is sure to get Texans talking. Prior to the show, Yang was even visiting with Texas winemaker, Lewis Dickson, who includes Yang\'s artwork on several of his La Cruz de Comal bottle labels.
Gracious and serene, Yang was kind enough to provide us with a walking tour of the exciting exhibition of her new work. She opened up about her evolution as an artist and the importance of remaining receptive to life’s possibilities.
Believe it or not, before she was an international jetsetting artist on the rise, Yang was a quiet librarian working in Japan. As a third generation Korean woman raised in Osaka, Yang learned how to live around the duality of a home life and a school life that did not always agree.
Discouraged by her parents to pursue her love of drawing, Yang pursued a liberal arts education instead. After receiving her graduate degree, Yang worked at the Japan Foundation for many years as a librarian. “I was alone a lot at the office, and I didn’t want that for myself,” recalls Yang. “So one day, I just quit. I thought, maybe I should give myself a break.”
Yang decided to make her career change official and gave herself two years to experience life as a full-fledged artist. She moved to the United States, rented studio space in Santa Monica, California, and started painting.
“I got [to the U.S.] and I was so scared,” she admits. “I had so much freedom and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was so honest and vulnerable. But that’s when I decided I had to just jump in.”
Accepting the challenge, Yang began with the hardest and least rule-bound art form she could conceive: abstract painting. While scaling the peaks of this personal Everest, Yang discovered a personal connection to this form of painting.
“In Asian paintings, everything is about energy,” explains Yang. “Abstract expressionism was influenced by Chinese and Japanese painting, Sumi-e drawings, where everything is contained in one brushstroke. I was brought up that way; I knew about it. And somehow, in the process of learning in my head, I forgot. Now I see the importance of it all. Slowly through the painting process, I’m learning it again.”
Once she overcame her intimidation of abstract painting, Yang began infusing her paintings with masterfully detailed figures as well. Yang had studied figure drawing for years, so these images were a comfortable return to familiar methods. \"I feel more settled with the figures,\" she says. \"And this is what I think I\'m more known for, these figures.\"
Most of the images she uses are old photographs she finds, but occasionally the images are borrowed from other painters like Caravaggio and Botticelli. Looking around the exhibit at the Russell Collection, you’ll find Yang’s interpretation of the Great Masters hanging next to distinctly Eastern images of women in traditional Japanese and Korean costume.
To the artist’s credit, the effect is never disorienting, as all of the paintings share a similar unifying abstract treatment. “I want to feel what the other artists felt when they were painting their version, but I do it my way,” says Yang. “However I’m feeling when I see the original image is what I want to include in my paintings.”
One historical figure Yang vividly recalls painting is Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and schoolteacher that spent her life defending thousands of Chinese women during Japanese invasion during the 1930s. “I remember an extreme sadness coming over me from her photograph,” she says. “And as I worked on this painting, I could not help but be overwhelmed by that sadness. You can see that energy in the painting.”
The deliberate foreground abstractions act as a deconstructed veil over the precisely drawn female figures in each of Yang’s paintings, establishing an exciting conflict that keeps the eye constantly engaged. The haunted, often unfinished women in Yang’s paintings appear trapped in the background, waiting for something more to happen.
“Art really helped my life,” says Yang while looking at one of her most recent works. “I didn’t want to call myself an artist. I’m just a painter. But while I’m painting, I feel comfortable. And it took a long time to find that.”
Yang, the wise philosopher-artist, is correct in asserting that painting can express the things we mean when words fail. Whether you know about the artist’s journey of self-discovery or not, it’s difficult not to be emotionally moved by the figures looking out from her canvases, women caught in the spaces between worlds.
Take time with these paintings and admire the layering and precision required to capture the intensity of the subject\'s focus or the vibrancy of the palette. Yang is making bold declarations, in the manner in which she is uniquely qualified. No longer a lonely librarian, Yang is now a painter with a clear, deliberate voice.
DATE: June 10, 2011
Steve Driscoll
The Telegram, St. John’s, NL, June 10, 2011
By Tara Bradbury
Growing up in Ontario, Steve Driscoll was perhaps not privy to the deceptive calmness of the ocean. Quiet one minute, roaring upon the rocks the next, the unpredictability of the water at its edge was a source of inspiration Driscoll wasn’t to experience until 2004, during his first visit to Pouch Cove.
The visual artist spent close to a month immersed in the local landscape, marveling in the power of the sea, often exploring by day; painting through the night.
“Upon my arrival in Pouch Cove, I was immediately drawn to the ocean and was fascinated by the steady yet unpredictable crashing of the waves,” Driscoll said.
At that point in his career, said Driscoll, now 30, he was already well into his work with his painting medium of choice — urethane — but was still experimenting with what it could do.
As it turns out, it was the perfect vehicle for him to capture the dance of the waves and their explosiveness as they collided with rocks.
“Urethane is fluid by nature, and the finished paintings retain this quality,” he explained.
While Driscoll was able to capture the water’s movement back then, he wasn’t quite able to express the explosion of water the way he wanted. Now, seven years on, he tried again, armed with photos taken during his first visit.
“Although I used photos to place the paintings, the crashing of the waves are mostly imagined or constructed through memory,” he said. “I set myself the task of capturing the vast and powerful pulse of the ocean, and the explosive rise of the water as the waves break.”
The result is “Dance of the Dories,” a 14-piece collection of urethane-on-panel artwork that will be shown at the James Baird Gallery in Pouch Cove from this Saturday until June 25.
Baird took a liking to Driscoll and his work when he first saw it in the studio space Driscoll shared with other painters in Toronto. At the time, Driscoll was represented by the same gallery as some of the more senior artists who had been to Baird’s Pouch Cove foundation, and Driscoll wanted to come to Newfoundland.
After the 2004 residency, Baird and Driscoll kept in touch. Driscoll has exhibited here a number of times since then, with shows in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
“Three years ago, Steve’s work took a more representative direction, and we joined forces to produce a 200-page monograph of his work, and organize exhibitions nationally and internationally,” Baird said.
Baird continues to be drawn to Driscoll’s work, calling him “the best thing since sliced bread” on his website.
“I’m a colourist; all the painters I represent and exhibit love to use vibrant colour in their work,” Baird said. “Steve is no exception, but more than that, he has developed a unique art practice in a medium that no one else uses: urethane. That material has properties unmatched by oils or acrylics, which is manifested in a physicality I adore.”
The use of urethane as a painting medium is very rare because its application is very toxic, Baird explained.
“Steve had learned over the past years to handle the material effectively, but during the learning curve, he has been able to explore the medium, working through many themes to find what is most successful for him and his art.”
Most of the current pieces show the explosive dance of water that enchanted Driscoll on his first visit here: there are waves upon waves, crashing into rocks and colliding next to boats, under calm skies and stormy skies, day and night. “Rolling Force” and “Blinding Spray” seem to be angrier pieces in colours unlike most of the others — blacks, purples, greens — while in “Eye of the Wave,” Driscoll’s urethane seems to gurgle beneath the foam of a crashing wave.
In “Morning Break,” drops and splashes of urethane depict perfectly the spray of the ocean in the air.
The only exceptions to the water dance are two paintings of buildings that drew Driscoll’s interest during his last visit here, last fall: Five Island Art Gallery in Tors Cove and an old shack he found on the drive between Pouch Cove and St. John’s.
“The windows of these buildings and the images captured in their reflections caught my eye,” Driscoll said. “Although the reflections are generally distorted, there is something inviting about them. As a viewer looking at the painting, you want to know what is inside the building, and what could be seen from inside, looking out.
“Specific location aside, I felt the wave-crashing images needed to be bracketed by a place where the viewer could be, so in this case, you might find yourself caught in a reflection, watching the waves.”
Baird says the images of Driscoll’s “Dance of the Dories” pieces don’t reproduce as well as his previous work, leading to a pleasant surprise when they actually arrived at the gallery.
“I was delighted to open the crates and be overwhelmed by the presence of the new paintings,” he said. “The view out my window in Pouch Cove is filled with ocean, but these works take the crashing waves and rough coastline in a new and wonderful direction.”
The public exhibition opening for Driscoll’s “Dance of the Dories” will take place at the James Baird Gallery, 654 Main Road in Pouch Cove, Saturday from 3-6 p.m.
DATE: September 9, 2011
Daisuke Takeya
The Telegram, St. John’s, NL, Sept 9, 2011
Daisuke Takeya has taken people’s mispronunciation of his name and turned it into a work of art.
The Toronto-based Japanese artist is in St. John’s this week and is presenting three separate works, one of them a reprise of his “Nuit Blanche” video work.
That piece came from a common North American pronunciation of his name, which sounds very much like the Japanese phrase for “I love you.”
“It was nice, sure, but after you hear it a million times it can be annoying,” Takeya said, laughing.
Tayeka turned the idea into an exploration of the meaning of the words “I love you” by creating a gigantic mirror mosaic sculpture and inviting strangers inside, to say the words in front of a video camera. This weekend, the videos will be displayed in 10 business windows in the downtown area. Takeya will also be recording more “I love yous” downtown.
“It’s a confession of substance,” he explained. “When you are saying ‘I love you’ to a video camera, you’re not saying it to anyone, because you are removed (from the viewer). It’s questioning what it means to say ‘I love you.’”
The other works Takeya’s presenting include an exhibit of a series of unique Newfoundland landscape paintings, in which he blends realism and abstract art, the realism taking up just 10 per cent of each piece, and a performance piece with classical cellist Vernon Regeher, in which he uses gestural painting, samurai swords and light boxes.
The opening reception for Takeya’s three pieces takes place at Bianca’s on Saturday from 6-8 p.m., with the performance set to happen around 7 p.m.
DATE: 20 July, 2006
Slow Burn - Harold Klunder
Slow burn: Harold Klunder\'s paintings aren\'t Julia Dault, National Post Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006 An overnight success in 40 years. That\'s how art dealer James Baird describes Harold Klunder, the veteran painter currently experiencing unprecedented commercial success with his large, colourful abstractions. \"Careful, that one\'s still wet,\" says Baird jokingly, pointing to a smaller work called Atlantic Light, 2006, a perfect oil on wood board, where colourful forms almost settle into recognizable objects -- like a sun over an ocean shore, say -- but then never quite resolve, as no upstanding abstraction should. The piece is the most recent painting of Four Decades, the retrospective-like exhibition of Klunder\'s work currently on view by appointment only at James Baird>Pouch Cove, Baird\'s solution to the recent forced closures of the Pouch Cove Foundation, which would normally have hosted the exhibition. \"I like the tension of in-between spaces,\" says Klunder, a soft-spoken man who has just flown in to Pouch Cove, Nfld., from his home in Flesherton, Ont. A painter since graduating in 1964 from the Central Technical School in Toronto, Klunder\'s love for in-betweens has played out in various ways over the years, ranging from pure abstraction to expressionism to experiments nearing figuration. Like any established artist, Klunder exhibits his work at various galleries across the country, including the TrepanierBaer Gallery (Calgary), the Michael Gibson Gallery (London, Ont.) and the Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto). And while he has steadily produced and sold work over the years, interest has never been higher. Last fall, a show at the Clint Roenisch Gallery completely sold out, a testament to his renaissance. \"Klunder isn\'t the kind of artist who waits for inspiration,\" explains Michael Gibson, who has represented the artist for nearly six years, \"He spends 12-hour days in the studio and has for many years. And you see it,\" he says, citing the way a Klunder painting has a way of slowly unfolding and changing over time, \"like a slow burn\". Though things like marketing (through catalogues and art fairs) and collectors\' spatial needs have no doubt contributed to Klunder\'s popularity, in the end, Gibson knows it\'s all about the painting. \"Harold\'s not trendy,\" he says. \"He\'s just doing it and doing it well. He just paints very good paintings.\" Out in Pouch, the nine works that make up Four Decades are a well-timed look at moments from Klunder\'s stylistic trajectory, starting with works completed in the early \'70s, like Stone Bridge (1972), Fender Blues (1973) and Orange Lustre (1973), elongated monochromatic canvases covered in drips of subtly colourful paint. \"I like to call that my \'Greenbergian phase,\' \" says Klunder, referring to the influential American art critic Clement Greenberg who supported the fevered Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s and helped shepherd Jackson Pollock and his drip paintings to legendary status. But though Klunder\'s early technique is clearly Pollock-inspired, simply echoing the great painter wasn\'t enough. Skyway Bridge (1973), for example, feels like an exorcism, where Klunder disrupts the drippy, \"accidental\" surface by smearing the drops across the canvas in one fell swoop. Big, haunting paintings like Crocodile God (1974) and Flat Out (1974-1976) are when Klunder figures he found his voice. Here, the tension is in the physical surface, where layers of paint are visible but trapped under a powerful cover of black, a deep from which surprising things emerge like a blue line here and a red hiccup there. The remaining two pieces in the exhibit are monumental. Spirit Matter III (Self-Portrait) (1989-1991) is a large, violently colourful composition in four panels where faces peer out from the reds, oranges and pinks. Finally, at more than two metres in length, the apex of the exhibition is Future, Present, Past (1986-1987) a breathtaking masterpiece that is Van Gogh, the Fauves, Munch and De Kooning rolled into one. But then, of course, it\'s none of these; in colour, impasto, form, movement and surety, it is, quite simply, a Klunder. The artist stands between this older, monster painting and Atlantic Light, the \"still wet\" work on the adjoining wall, looking back and forth between the two while wearing a studied expression, as if he\'s looking in the mirror. \"Funny,\" he says, seemingly reassured, \"they\'re really not all that different.\" - Harold Klunder\'s works are on view in Pouch Cove, Nfld., until Aug. 12. For more information, contact James Baird> Pouch Cove at 709-727-9771.
DATE: 1 September, 2006
Stretching Boundaries- Abraham Brewster
Friday, September 1, 2006 Stretching boundaries By Karla Hayward, Special to The Telegram Abraham Brewster paints bodies. Naked bodies. Bodies distorted and elongated and entwined among one another. They are most often faceless, headless and anonymous but, like most great art, they evoke deep feelings in the viewer. Complicated feelings, but deep ones. Brewster is a figurative painter. Currently New York-based, he spent much of his youth in Cape Breton and has been in residence at the Pouch Cove Foundation since June. His works can be disturbing at times. They are tense and painstaking. But they are, without doubt, beautiful. They are luminous. Brewster achieves this effect by avoiding certain areas of the canvas, right from his first brush stroke, showing a determined foresight. Each looks as though it is only lightly glossed with a layer or two of paint. But as Brewster points out, each piece has up to 20 layers of paint, each thin as milk. "I start by making the canvas like glass because I need that to make them glow - I paint slowly and deliberately, there's a lot of work that goes into the basic building of the paintings. Brewster has an element of the scientist or mathematician to him. His works are geometric, where a 45-degree angle drawn from a corner takes you dead centre on a torso vaulting over the edge. They evoke thoughts of networks, traffic systems, computer chip intricacies. Heavily influenced by technology, the works are still about human interconnectedness. 'There's an element of the virtual to this. I mean, we're all projecting ourselves out into this ... ether that doesn't really exist. These are new ways of being, new ways of thinking, new ways of looking forward to a solution that we don't really understand." One painting, Say It Ain't So, is different from the others. It is a singular scene that has been pulled apart, whereas the others contain multiple bodies. Here there are two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. A stool, a gold floor and a dead hare finish out the scene. "What's interesting to me here is that this is a single scene that has been pulled apart and examined in different ways and maybe at different times. Because there is an interesting tension between the implication of time and the implications of a static scene,' says Brewster of the work. In addition to the singularity of the scene, there is also the issue of the intricately painted dead hare draped inside the work. According to Brewster, he doesn't particularly want to explain its significance - if there even is one - but, he does speak broadly to the idea of testing a work. "I think artistic projects that acknowledge their fictionality, or acknowledge their weakness, or the weakness of the fact that they are fictions - the fact that they simply are coloured dirt, oil and canvas, to acknowledge that in the middle of the project, gives it credibility and tests it. You're throwing a grenade into it - or, in this case, a rabbit. The newer works, completed in Pouch Cove, appear to have been influenced by the place. In one - I have Looked, I Know - the base colour is the blue of the ocean on a summer's day. Two others - Apparition and Cove - take a dramatic departure with a hazy greyness reminiscent of the fog-bound days Brewster experienced here. These works are also different in their tonality. Rather than being tersely extended to the wrap around the canvas edge, the figures fade away. A gentler exit. Brewster acknowledges the impact the weather in Pouch Cove had on him. "The atmosphere in Pouch is almost graspable when the fog rushes in. You can almost hold onto it. There are times when you can't see anything at all. There's a particular vulnerability and a comfort to that." Abraham Brewster: New Work can be seen until Sept. 25 at 141 Military Rd., above the Flower Studio. Visit www.abrahambrewster.com to find out more. The Telegram A division of Transcontinental Media Inc. Columbus Drive - P.O. Box 5970 - St. John's - Newfoundland and Labrador - A1C 5X7 Contents of this website are copyright The Telegram telegram@thetelegram.com & xwave
DATE: 17 March, 2007
Dimitri Papatheodorou- Globe & Mail review March 1
Dimitri Papatheodorou is a Toronto-based architect and painter (and composer), whose exhibition at 1313, Encounters, has apparently inspired by the architecturally scaled works (the Torqued Ellipses, in particular) of American sculptor Richard Serra. It's not easy, especially at first, to see the links between Papatheodorou's delicate, ethereally painted pictures (you'd swear they were photographs) and the huge, sweaty Serra sculptures -- big Faustian bendings of heavy Cor-Ten steel. But, as Papatheodorou points out in his gallery statement, Serra's work is "all about the close encounter between artifact and viewer" and notes that Serra "does with sculpture what I want to do with painting." This is quite impossible, of course, and Papatheodorou's extremely deft and delicate works could not be more removed from the spirit of Serra's strenuous, Paul-Bunyan-esque, space-bending energies. What they do well, however, is to depict a lovely, veiled light falling softly into the picture space. For me, they make a better tribute to Le Corbusier's famous Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamps, France, than they do to any Tilted Arc or Torqued Ellipse you can imagine. Gary Michael Dault
