Monday, January 14, 2013

my visit with Roxy and the others

splitscreenspace summer d'ete'  oil on canvas by Charles Gagnon 1977
 maman, cast bronze by Louise Bourgeois 1999
one hundred foot line, steel  by Roxy Paine 2010
balling, oil on canvas by Joyce Wieland, 1961

I went to Ottawa on Saturday to visit the National Gallery.  Slowly looking at great visual art is a magical kind of healing and nourishment..

Gerald Ferguson - his dot painting from 1974
Greg Curnoe - the hurdle for art lovers that he made from kitchen knives and knitting needles
Jack Bush - one of his Flag Series
Paterson Ewen - a painting of the night sky that I was unfamiliar with
Betty Goodwin of course -the room full of  her bed drawings and related sculpture
Ronald Bloore - I'd forgotten how much I liked his work
The rest are in the Builder's exhibition - 2nd biennial of new aquistions. Ottawa citizen review here.
David Ross Harper - a life sized realistic race horse with a beautifully embroidered crest on its flank
David Merritt - his drawing that looked like grass or hay from a distance - but once you were closer it was popular song titles .  I also heard him speak "I like that drawing can convey duration of time"
Jon Pylypchuk - his worried animalistic figures
Sarah Anne Johnson - the feelings that she tried to show by altering her photographs, she spoke "I strive to make work about me and my thoughts"
Susan Dobson spoke and I loved to hear her intelligence
Chris Cran spoke "what if my hand has its own intelligence?"
Elisapee Ishulutaq - her twenty foot long oil stick drawing about her home place and the video of her on her knees making it.

5 comments:

Caterina Giglio said...

healing and nourishment... i agree...

April said...

mom so much to see! u are so amazing at notation and remembering and it is just really inspiring and we are so lucky to have your curated selections so easily! and i mean in this post in particular and in general in regards to essays and poetry and and andddddddd

Heather said...

Thanks so much for sharing. It's been years since I have visited the National Gallery. It is such a wonderful institution and such a treasure chest, something for all Canadians to be proud of.

Judy Martin said...

And then on Sunday, I listened to Writers and company on CBC with my father and Maria Warner was speaking so intelligently about Freud: "There is meaning in everything we do" and about the idea of Magical Thinking - which is what happens I think when we read novels, see plays, listen to music, see art.

Magical Thinking
"When the mind has to go where ideas are not probable, but you need to go there anyway and makek leaps. We need to imagine these ways of being because they take us out of the way we are now."

I'm still with my dad for another week.
xx

mansuetude said...

Since every time I come over, I end up in another "place" I will say

Thank You for the homework. I love it!