Paintings by
INA PUCHALA

 
20th October -  30th October, 2011
Reception 6pm-8pm, Thursday, October 20t
Open: Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm & Sunday 1pm to 5pm

Canadian Fine Arts
577 Mount Pleasant Rd.–Toronto,ONM4S 2M5
(416) 544 8806

Canadian Fine Arts Margaret Frazer House Silent Auction
Brick by Brick

A Building & Consciousness Raising Event
Co-Hosts Canadian Fine Arts & Margaret Frazer House with generous contributions from the community

When: Oct.19th, 2011 from 5-9pm
Where: Canadian Fine Arts

To place a bid call Terri at 416 544 8806
Tickets $50 (Can be used towards a painting purchase)

Some work got made.
Other work failed to resolve and I razed the surface, yet again.
Got stuck.

A gripping read: Michal Glowinski’s ‘The Black Seasons’
and ‘his motif of the liminal space between memory and forgetting’
…I am gluing and building cradles

Drawing lines in graphite.
and sometimes I paint. And I fret.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy sounds real fine right now.

Alas, on the horizon space and time are aligning themselves to open up a welcome withdrawal into my beloved studio. Although it’s a humble space, it is home to countless visual incubations: births, battles, causalities, and when lucky, rebirths.

I admit the feast and famine cycle I presently occupy, and with all probability will forever occupy as a 21^st century visual artist, is trying and stressful, but it’s also vibrant and engaging. Perhaps, therein lays the drive for the creative process, the dichotomy of the two circumstances – always a tension – the binding thread in my visual narrative.

I recall an art teacher from the past righteously claiming that inevitably the artist’s life becomes like the artist’s work. Damned right! 18 years ago I was baffled by the riddle.  The accumulation of years, more behind less in front, and of paint has formed an intimate relationship with that claim and there’s no shaking it off now. It’s too late!

‘Prospect: Steps away from my mother’s house’ (oil on wood panel), is a new acquisition of Toronto’s Canadian Fine Arts gallery.

Available for viewing are several of my new works from ’Prospect’ and paintings from ‘Summer and Smoke’.

Abstract Painter | Toronto| Canada

The past couple of months have been a flurry of activity and opportunity. I was fortunate enough to view several worthwhile art exhibitions in both Toronto and Ottawa.

A complimentary pass compelled me to take a few hours to view Art Toronto 2010. Although my pace was brisk, there was a notable decline in the show of photography. There were plenty of paintings ranging from the commercially slick to the gutsy. Poignant paintings by Jean-Pierre Ruel stopped me dead in my tracks; his abstracted figurations pulsing in a seemingly still grey ground.

I then ventured to Ottawa. There I viewed Carl Beam’s work, an Ojibwa artist from Manitoulin Island, Ontario who has a retrospective on at The National Gallery. As an artist, he is obsessed with creating and interpreting his own experience in relation to his native /Euro-American background and today’s world. His The Whale of Our Being project touched a nerve in me; perhaps, herein lies a prophesy:

‘”Under the umbrella of the whale are commodification and dollars and killing…whatever happened to the whale…in some kind of way happens to everything else.” (Curator’s notes, I think)

My last foray in exhibitions occurred at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The house was packed for the film screening of Kinngait (pronounced King night). Kinngait is the
world-renowned, Inuit owned and operated art cooperative in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. The film portrays first hand accounts of the beginnings of the Kinngait studio in the 1950’s to the present day. The film beautifully articulates the generational shift in artistic expression and style due to changes in community, way of life and globalization. I highly recommend viewing this film, particularly if you have an interest in Inuit art.

Now comfortably satiated from the visual feast, I feel ready for a period of hibernation. But wait! The ARTbus is coming…

I would love to know whether you went to any of these art exhibitions. If you did, what were your impressions? Be sure to leave me a comment.

This is Ontario College of Art and Design’s (OCAD) first alumni exhibition, a voluntary initiative made possible by some very committed individuals, two years in the making. Opening night, Art Square Gallery & Cafe was bustling in an air of celebration. Elbow to elbow, savoring mouthfuls of sweet fruit and wine, the crowd was a fine blend of generations.

Fifty artists were showcased across all art and design disciplines. I found great pleasure in Dennis Burton’s, Cyan Orange Red 1964, a fresh simplification of collage and colour. Vale 2010 by Catherine proved evocative.

Not only was the vernissage a mutual opportunity to exchange vignettes on our professional practice and the business of art, it was an affirmation of our durability and commitment. We’re still kicking around!

The show continues until Sunday, Nov 28th
Art Square Gallery & Cafe, 334 Dundas St. W,
daily 9-4pm

Abstract Painter | Toronto| Canada

Hours spent hovering over a painting; once tender and nurturing strokes turn to movements of apprehension and fear.   The surface has become a no man’s land where my direction is lost.

At this stage, paint becomes infuriating like a philandering man.  The surface seems to unravel before the eye.  It and I are at a standstill.  How to proceed?  Naturally, I move on to one of the dozen or so surfaces on the go, carrying forward something of the predecessor.
 

What goes on in my mind when engaged in painting?  

That’s a dangerous question.

In the front end, I’m focused on the aesthetic and technical aspects. In the back end, it’s a dense forest.  The effects of globalization, the quality of food and the resultant crop in life expectancy for the upcoming generation of children, the razor’s edge of hope and despair, just to name some.

The complexity of thought and inner ramblings imbue the body of the paint. James Elkins, in What Painting Is, describes this transference best: paint becomes ‘a fine tuned antenna, reacting to every unnoticed movement of the painter’s hand, fixing the faintest shadow of a thought in colour and texture.’

This is paint as liquid thought.

Not only did I attend the opening to meet colleagues, but I wanted to satisfy a curiosity. With sixteen artists exhibiting, did the squares and fools have a proper presence? Indeed, they did.

The Squares, a series of 23 miniature oil paintings, hang casually on one wall. Had someone alerted me to entertaining such scale of work, I would have drowned their words with uproarious laughter. Undeniably, a spell is cast in this world of tininess; wherein lies a delicacy and minuteness of complexity. Bounded in this 2 inch square, space is transfigured.

Around the corner, 3 framed subjects from The Fool’s Paradise suite (acrylic on paper) are poised in orderly sequence upon the whitewashed wall.

The show closes Oct 9th. To find out more about B Art Gallery, visit www.bartgallery.ca