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gary blundell
central ontario 99/01
central ontario 02/03
central ontario 04/05
cobalt 06/08
elliot lake 04/05
france 04/05
iceland 01/03
lake superior 97/04
newfoundland 98/04
pacific rim 06
planets 1996
sudbury 05/07
thunder bay 06
twillingate 08
yukon 00
wood block cuts
 
bio
media
cv

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victoria ward
cobalt 06/08
early work
france 04/05
gamey
iceland
local work
sudbury 05/07
 
bio
media
cv

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“…painting is an affirmation of the existent, of the physical world into which mankind has been thrown.”
John Berger

“The blue and the yellow and the red all began to mix together. It was a terrible mess. But when the Wizard saw what was happening, he exclaimed, “That is the answer!” And he danced joyfully around the cellar.”
Arnold Lobel, The Great Blueness and other predicaments

“Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood, water and rock.”
Simon Schama


  Life is a slow transformation from the material to the ethereal. On this journey I believe we struggle  to have understanding, wisdom and purpose.  Painting is an act of connection to, and a  manifestation of this struggle.

  I work on wood and on paper and I use a lot of mixed media in order to organize a kind of  iconographic composition that serves to highlight an entropic event.  Ruins, recycled items, forgotten things and the decaying are all the beginning focus in my work.   I like to convey uncertainty, flux, restlessness and isolation; notions that I believe inhabit the natural world and our role we play in it.  Because I live in a rural area without neighbours or infrastructure my days usually include coping with the changes in the environment.   At its core conceptually, my work is about abandonment and I work within that mythos but I am always questioning, as Schama asks, “whether it is possible to take myth seriously on its own terms, and to respect its coherence and complexity, without becoming morally blinded by its poetic power.”

  My subject matter often focuses on abandoned shelters or derelict homes that dot themselves throughout rural areas.  They are to me the residues of our need to mark ourselves onto the land.  These lonely little structures convey how nature and mankind go back and forth in domination; at one time a shack was a home with a cleared yard, now it is a thicket where woodcocks reside.  The ineffable area between the land, its indifference to us, and our need to see our image somewhere on its surface is where I want my work to exist. 

  Through painting I have come to realize that creativity is a force that flows through the world, and those who harness it are people aware of their mortality.  Like ancient peoples that painted animals on the walls of caves to connect to their food and/or their deity, I too have a desire to connect to the world I have been thrown into.

Bio

Victoria Ward was born in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada in the mid-sixties.  She always wanted to be a painter because of her mother, who also painted and took her to art galleries at a young age.  After attending York University in Toronto, Ward spent the nineties working as a professional playwright and collaborating with the city’s most alternative artists: Theatre Gargantua, DNA Theatre, Autumn Leaf Performance, Kensington Carnival and Crow’s Theatre.  Ward still writes poetry and has a chapbook published, ‘notes from a log cabin’, Camenae Press 2003 and a new poetry book ‘shining or something electric’, Pointyhead Press.  She started painting full time in 1997 and has exhibited in Toronto, Barrie, Ottawa, Vancouver and Haliburton County where she now lives.   

The above pictures of Victoria were taken in Paris, 2004 and Iceland, 2001.

 
upcoming events:

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Victoria Ward  2008

'rockets and gallows',  new work

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, DECADE, September

Pentimento Fine Art Gallery    Toronto, 
October 2 - 26

Art Gallery of Peterborough, March 13 - May 10, 2009

'shining or something electric', poetry & imagery book, hand bound by Don Taylor.
Email us if you want one!

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Gary Blundell  2008

Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, DECADE, September

Art Gallery of Northumberland  Cobourg, October 18 - 
November 29

Artguise Ottawa, October 24 - 
November 12

Art Gallery of Peterborough, March 13 - May 10, 2009

Pentimento Fine Art Gallery   Toronto,  April 2009

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All art work and other media on this website should not to be reprinted or published in any form without the written consent of the artists.
Hotspur Studio © 2000.