previews and profiles RONALD BOAKS
CRAIG YEATS
ALBERTA: Paintings & Still Life Photographs, Feb 7 to March 8, The Weiss Gallery, Calgary
BRITISH COLUMBIA: Vancouver Paintings, opens Feb 6, Rendezvous Art Gallery, Vancouver
There are many artists who work in more than one medium, but it’s rare to find an artist who combines media in the way that Ronald Boaks does. He began as a painter of delicate and muted abstracts, canvases that have evolved to become bolder and more colour-saturated. Then, maintaining his painting practice, he discovered a new way to represent the work —as backdrop in a series of lush still life photographs shot with a large-format Linhof camera. The technique began as an experiment — Still Life, Pomegranates on Green, Ronald Boaks, Fujiflex print, Boaks discovering the possibilities in still life edition of 10, 2005, 54" X 48" photography, and looking around for subjects at hand. His house in Toronto is full of objects and art — his wife’s aunt was acclaimed early Canadian abstract painter Kathleen Munn — and Boaks says that in his house it’s “common to see objects in front of paintings.” So the still life subjects suggested themselves readily. Putting up an old plywood table as a shelf, he began placing things in front of his paintings, posing them for the camera. His photographs are a mix of living and inanimate objects — flowers and fruit, sculpture, china, books, bowls — the accoutrements of a life full of intellectual curiosity. The balance of colour is clearly important to Boakes — both in his paintings and in the photographs. Some of the photographs have an almost otherworldly richness of colour — deep apple greens and burnished oranges that suggest the extremes of nature found only in tropical regions. Others frame a paleness and simplicity that’s more in the context of his earlier paintings. In fact, Boaks says now that he’s finding it more difficult to feature his newer paintings as photographic subjects. The newer paintings are too active, and don’t work well in his compositions. The work is all in balance — both structurally and in terms of colour, and he describes the simple technique forced on him by the medium of large-format photography. “When I look through the camera, everything appears upside down to me, and that helps me to check the composition.” He likens it to the old painters’ technique of looking at a subject through a mirror to see it anew. This show at Calgary’s new Weiss Gallery, which will combine paintings and photography, is the first Boaks has had in western Canada. He describes the new work in its connection to moments in time. The paintings represent this moment, now, while the photographs capture a moment that has already passed, but has been preserved. — Jill Sawyer
A master of the palette knife, Craig Yeats’ newest acrylic landscapes continue in his expressionist style. “About six or seven years ago I started using the palette knife extensively,” he says. “It’s what distinguishes my work.” Texture, color and design are overriding concerns, though Yeats doesn’t ignore subject matter entirely. “My work isn’t literal, but I get it close enough to the place it represents. I’m trying to get to the heart of the place.” The geographical areas that interest Yeats are often in the greater Vancouver area, and this show will be no exception. It will include paintings from Vancouverarea landmarks like Fishermen’s Cove, Horseshoe Bay, False Creek, Coal Harbor and Vancouver’s Inner Harbor. Boats and sailing are often featured prominently in his work. Yeats began working in watercolours as a teenager, painting ocean scenes from near his
Represented by: The Weiss Gallery, Calgary; Moore Gallery, Toronto; The David Kay Gallery, Toronto
SYDNEY LANCASTER ALBERTA: thought & memory: curiosities, March 1 to 23, Arts on Atlantic, Calgary
Like the crows and ravens that figure so prominently in her work, Edmonton-based artist Sydney Lancaster is a collector. She collects found objects to use in her work, and also the memories and ideas that form the basis of the mixed-media pieces. “I’m really interested in the relationships we establish between memory and tangible reality, and how part of the human path is really about re-writing our own stories as we go,” she says. “Sometimes this is absolutely conscious, sometimes less so.” Her current work mixes assemblage and collage to create something unique and powerful with an underpinning of good design. Incorporated found objects — bark, inkjet prints, fragments of text — are layered with oil and acrylic paints, inks, plaster and beeswax, sometimes carved through to reveal new surfaces. “I’m focused on the intersection between an outward reality (what we want to or choose to see and reveal) and what lies below the surface,” Lancaster says, adding that she’s also trying to impart a sense of the risk involved in revealing what’s hidden. On the staff at Latitude 53 artist-run centre in Edmonton, Lancaster has participated in a series of group shows and festivals, both as an artist and as a poet. — Jill Sawyer Represented by: Arts on Atlantic, Calgary
Coal Harbour, Craig Yeats, 40" x 30", 2006, acrylic on canvas
West Vancouver neighborhood. It spurred him on to do university studies in fine arts, including an MFA from the University of North Carolina in 1977. — Beverly Cramp Represented by: Rendezvous Art Gallery,
40 Galleries West Spring 2008
Souvenirs, Sydney Lancaster,
Vancouver; Brights’ Gallery, Burlington,
mixed media, 2007
Ontario www.gallerieswest.ca