Toronto visit

Tomorrow is Another Day, indigo in linen damask, applique, hand stitching, 2024

I went to Toronto this past weekend and spent Friday and Saturday sleeps at the Gladstone House on Queen West.  I was able to do this fancy thing because part of the Gladstone House Award that I won last fall was one night's sleep in the room where my work is hanging for one year.  (The second night was half price).  My linen wall piece will be in room 309 until November.   

Our daughter April lives in the west end of the city, and she took me to several commercial galleries on the Saturday.  First up was the Patel Brown gallery.  There was a group show on entitled What We Carry.  The work of Japanese-Canadian artist, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka resonated with me.  I was fascinated with the boulders made from her own handmade washi paper that she had printed on with lino blocks, then cut and sewed back together. The 3-dimensional wall pieces are also made with the same material and process.

At the same gallery, we saw some pieces by Swapnaa Tamhane 

Bird's Eye mirror embroidery on dyed silk by Swapnaa Tamhane

Fence watercolour on paper  by Swapnaa Tamhane

I feel so lucky to have been able to see these inspirational, quilt-like pieces that speak a language of place so eloquently.  

We visited the Clint Roenisch gallery next and saw Leif Low-Beer's solo exhibition of naive sculptures and paintings done in pastels and bright colours in a variety of mediums.  

S.E.T.M. 1 2025 

The Daniel Faria gallery is next door to Clint Roenisch and I very much enjoyed seeing Jean-Francois Lauda's paintings.  The show is called Some Exceeding Twelve Minutes, and all six of the paintings had the same name, differentiated by a number. 

S.E.T.M. 5     2025

Jean-Francois Lauda is a practicing musician, and the title, Some Exceeding Twelve Minutes refers to the time that performances of musical pieces stretches to be longer than usual or expected.  I liked that time is considered a material in these paintings.  The artist says that he enjoys "staying with something long enough to understand what it's doing or undoing".  

I tried to understand why Lauda's work resonated with me and I think it is because his paintings are similar to my own work (in textiles) in that his paintings a) are nearly monochromatic and b) there are large areas of 'empty space filled with textural marks".

The last gallery that we visited on Saturday was the MOCA - the Museum of Contemporary Art.  I wanted to see all the shows that were there, (Jessica Stockholder, Justin Ming Yong, but the only one that I ended up loving was Margaux Williamson's extensive exhibition entitled Shoes, books, hands, buildings and cars.   There were a lot of paintings, several of them dated 2025.  Most were very large.  Her palette verges on monochromatic that favours neutrals.  I love that she uses representation in such a diaristic way.  In her compositions she plays with abstraction, a variety of perspectives, unfinished areas, contemporary dailiness.  

I've followed Margaux Williamson's career for a while, beginning from when I first read about how she tried to make an ugly painting in the Sheila Heti novel that was grounded in their personal friendship, How Should a Person Be?    This is the first time that I have seen her paintings in real life however, and the size of them and the skill in them, is astounding.   

The final artist I will speak about is my grand daughter, Suvi, age 4.  She used finger paint on finger painting paper, but (such a rebel) she used a paint brush to apply the paint (except for that red finger-painted circle in the painting on the upper left.)    

I'll send best wishes to all of you with this selfie.    Tomorrow is Another Day.  xo