After a long winter's hibernation I am at last ready to emerge.
The first weekend in June I will take part in Ottawa's Art in the Park and on July 8th the Centretown Art Tour, or CAT Walk (link soon to come). I am also working out the dates for a week long solo show.
The result of my last few months in hiding is Retrievals and Alternations. This series of paintings on canvas is inspired by my earlier work My Spinster Aunt Who was also a Seamstress for Eatons. My Great Aunt Doreen did repairs and alterations for the now defunct Canadian department store. It is my effort in these new works to retrieve faces from the past most of which belong to the muses and models of famous modern artists. I'm hoping I've painted Franzi (shown here), Erna and Dora Mar, among others, as subjects in their own right or the personalities behind the bodies.
The images in these works have been drawn from old photographs. I've used both fabric and paint to alter the story told by the eye told by the camera lens. My Spinster Aunt will make a reappearance. The original was purchased by Anita Lahey, editor of the poetry magazine ARC. She did not seem to mind the awkward title though it was stitched right onto the canvas. Perhaps she attached a couple of commas when she got it home.