BEN REEVES SNAPSHOT
May 11th – June 8th
In Snapshot,Ben Reeves focuses on the fleeting moments of everyday life. Reeves captures these passing images on his iPhone, heightening the sense of immediacy that they convey: the shadow of a streetlight cast on a wall at sundown, a bush of hydrangeas spilling over in full bloom, the beam of floodlights on a soccer pitch at night. Everywhere, Reeves is drawn to the quality of light. He carefully draws viewers into the atmosphere of his paintings by letting it filter across his work.
Reeves transcribes his chosen images onto paper in fine strokes of oil paint. Paper’s inherent ephemerality allows Reeves a certain freedom: the ability to treat the material like a playground for his practice, which echoes the fleeting nature of the scenes he depicts. In Snapshot,Reeves uses his colour palette of purples, pinks, oranges, greens, and blues to elicit a sense of warmth. Despite the source material being crisp iPhone photography, the final images appear hazy or wispy, like a memory.
“Ihavethoughtaboutthepaintingsasakindofsnapshotand manyofthemusephotosmuchmorecloselythanmostofmy largerpaintings.Theyarealsodiaristicinnatureastheyreflectmy dailyexperiencesofthepastyear. ” - Ben Reeves
BEN REEVES
Snowshoe , 2024 oil on paper
24 x 12 in.
$ 7,200.00
B EN REEVES
Seawall , 2023 oil on paper
16 x 12 in.
$ 4,800.00
BEN REEVES
Hydrangea , 2023 oil on paper
16 x 12 in.
$ 4,800.00
BEN REEVES
Streetlight,Gastown , 2024 oil on paper
16 x 12 in.
$ 4,800.00
BEN REEVES
BoundaryBay , 2023 oil on paper
12 x 16 in.
$ 4,800.00
12 x 16 in.
$ 4,800.00
BEN REEVES NightPractice , 2023 oil on paper
B EN REEVES
WeddingPhotographs,CityPark , 2023 oil on paper
16 x 12 in.
$ 4,800.00
12 x 16 in.
$ 4,800.00
BEN REEVES RoadsideBouquetII , 2023 oil on paper
BEN REEVES
The New Cat , 2024 oil on paper
16 x 12 in.
$ 4,800.00
Ben Reeves grew up in Lynn Valley on the North Shore of Vancouver and currently resides in Tsawwassen, a suburb outside of the city. The culture and landscape of the West Coast has always been a powerful source of inspiration in his work. Reeves paints from memory rather than source material and depicts fragments of his daily experiences, often in dream-like palettes of blues, pinks and yellows. Reeves is best known for the physicality of his surfaces, applying large mounds of paint to represent snow or rain while making no attempt to disguise its material construction. More recently, Reeves has employed burlap in place of canvas and added elements of collage to advance his exploration into the relationship between an image and its making.
Ben Reeves was born in 1969. He is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. He has exhibited his work extensively in Canada as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and China. In 2018, Reeves' survey exhibition, Floating AmongPhantoms , was held at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam, British Columbia for which a catalogue was published. Other important exhibitions include ThePaintingProject:ASnapshot ofPaintinginCanada , Galerie de l'UQUAM, Montreal, 2013 and For theRecord:DrawingContemporaryLife , Vancouver Art Gallery, 2003. Reeves' works are held in numerous collections including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.