Audio Intro

Welcome to the Gallery de Boer audio page. Here you will find interesting bits of audio interviews about art, artists and the art world. In this podcast from the Wichita Art Museum, Ingo Hessel, curator for the exhibition Arctic Spirit, gives a gallery tour discussing Inuit sculptors and printmaking in the last 70 years. The Louise and S.O. Beren Gallery and the John W. and Mildred L. Graves Gallery, April 6 – July 20, 2008 Approximately 10 minutes.

Vessels: Carriers of Meaning – Fabric of Space

The work of Monika Aebischer, Cynthia Porter, and Heidi Berger.

The appeal is immediate, the colours are explosive, and the spectacle is (nearly) indescribable. The exhibit is a celebration of three artist’s spectacular interpretation of vessels, in both the most literal sense as well as the symbolic. Imagery, colours, composition, and intensity separate the styles, yet the central theme and inner meaning can not help but be intrinsic to all three artists.

Monika Aebischer’s distinctive medium demands interest and a closer inspection. Various sizes of wooden canvases, coated with resin (also used on dashboards of BMW’s), trap the silver metal leaf base and the vibrance of acrylic in a pristine capsule. Aebischer combines flat line drawing with the depth and sheen of the resin coating to draw the viewer’s eye to every nuance of the work. She compliments the primitive-style line drawing with small detailed patterns, leaf prints, elements of collage, and repeated symbols. Most notable of the works is the brilliant use of colour. Crimson becomes the colour of choice in many of the backgrounds, often allowing hints of gold, silver leaf, and or turquoise to glimmer through. Aebischer considers her work to be “representing universal human experiences” through the use of “the body as a corporeal vessel, mark-making, ephemeral, ritual, and honouring.”

Cynthia Porter displays vessels in a more literal sense. Her canvases are filled with bowls, goblets, jugs, vases, and an assortment of ships. Her loose, yet deliberate style is reminiscent of handmade pottery and well-loved, well-used dishes, complete with signs of use and imperfection. However, the final product is nothing short of perfection. She combines vivid hues, collage, and encaustic to produce various sized canvases that celebrate simplistic form, the quality of line and colour, and art which emphasizes elements of movement, playfulness, excitement, and partial abstraction. Porter references “primitive vessel shapes providing the vehicle for considering figure and ground, line and texture, substance and atmosphere, assertion and reticence rather than expressing an ideology or a particular message.”

Heidi Berger maintains the literal reference to vessels, but suppresses the inherent presence of containers by incorporating more prevalent subject matter into the frame. Inspired by 18th and 19th century paintings, she works on large canvases with dark backgrounds. This base allows her the means to produce explosive foreground images with brilliant flowers, figures, fruit, and fauna. Acrylic and collage mediums create realistic lighting situations with playful splashes, juxtaposed against a more subdued atmosphere. With reminiscent subject matter, Berger works towards bringing together “a life existed connected with a life existing.”

Like a vessel, a canvas is an empty carrier, waiting for its content and meaning to be applied. Aebischer, Porter, and Berger have taken advantage of the canvas’s naked vulnerability and through imagination, experience, and talent have inoculated it with a life time of symbolism, fantasy, fertility, beauty, reflection, spirituality, and energy. The works burst with the power of presence, and beg to be hung free of the confinement of a frame.

Sophie Ryan

Canadian Art Forgeries

Canadian Art Forgeries

Until recently, Canadian art has not attained the values that would warrant an extensive network of forgeries of individual paintings, but there have been some notable exceptions, principally involving the works of Tom Thomson and Cornelius Krieghoff. Forgeries and frauds will continue to proliferate as the prices of Canadian art escalate, and not only for the biggest names in Canadian art but also, increasingly, for the lesser known artists where slight modifications are less easily noticed. Many of the Group of Seven artists and Maud Lewis, William Goodridge Roberts, and Norval Morrisseau, among others, have either been copied or had fake signatures added to unsigned works that give them an apparent stamp of authenticity. The market for Inuit prints and soapstone carvings is rampant with forgeries. Even prestigious auction houses have been fooled, and with the increasing presence of eBay and on-line auctions, the opportunities to put dubious or fraudulent art in play have increased dramatically.
Mr. Alan D. Bryce started collecting art in the 1960’s and specializes in the artwork of renowned Canadian artist Doris McCarthy and currently owns the largest private collection of her art in anada. He noted that a number of years ago, he purchased a beautiful charcoal pastel of a young female nude, dated 1915 and signed by Suzor-Cote, from an auction at Joyner Waddington’s. Some time later Laurier Lacroix, the leading expert on Suzor-Cote, raised doubts about the authenticity of the piece. When Mr. Bryce approached Geoffrey Joyner, the president of Joyner’s at the time, about Mr. Lacroix’s doubts, he, without hesitation, refunded the purchase price.
So, fakes and frauds do occur from time to time in the Canadian art market, but for now they are mostly limited to forged signatures added to imitations rather than copies of famous paintings. The world of on-line auctions and eBay puts another layer of distance and accountability between the buyer and the seller, and purchasers should be exceedingly cautious when buying artwork, especially prints, in this marketplace.
Look for more on this subject in future articles in Owen Sound Life.

Cornucopia III

Cornucopia III
Review by Sophie Ryan

Once a year the Gallery de Boer presents its patrons with a buffet of visual pleasure; a collaboration of artists and images of unimaginable diversity. A chance for any and all viewers to experience art which interests and excites them. Cornucopia provides such an experience by never limiting the walls of the gallery to only a few purposely selected artists or styles.
What Cornucopia truly manifests to the viewers is the potential in every form, technique, process, subject, or medium. Whether you enjoy art for the talent involved in recreating precise details, or the artists’ ability to shape an image from imagination and emotion alone – this show guarantees viewing pleasure for even the most skeptical critic.
From the walls of the exhibit leap spectacular nudes, elegant landscapes, vibrant still-lives, eye-catching abstraction, and everything from whimsical sketches, to the painstaking accuracy of Inuit painting, to photography, to photographic realism, to sculpture. The intrigue is endless.
The many styles and techniques of the artists touched upon by this show radiate from every corner of the gallery and give the viewer an honest chance at appreciating individual pieces. When art is presented in a smorgasbord fashion, each piece is forced to stand alone and challenged to stand out in a sea of talent and spectacle. Therefore, when viewers find a piece which truly speaks to them, they can be sure they enjoy the work for its unique qualities, rather then just picking out the less-appalling piece in a collection which they may not totally appreciate.
While every art piece is spectacular in principle, certain work will either stand out or be passed by in the minds of each viewer, whether they prefer action-packed sports scenes, eclectic still-lives, the wonder of the human form, the movement of vessels in a seascape, or the beauty of nature. Art will remain a subjective experience.
For the ultimate collector or the amateur observer, a variety of one of a kind pieces or limited edition prints have the potential to begin a lavish collection or enhance one already in existence.
From fantasy to realism, photography to abstraction; Cornucopia reveals and celebrates the relentless lack of boundaries, trends, or conformity found only in contemporary art work. In no other decade will we find more freedom of artistic practice and diversity within age-old mediums. At last artists are free to express any concept or idea in any means possible, and instead of being met with ridicule and criticism, are embraced as creative geniuses – breaking free of societies’ ever critical preconceived notions of what constitutes art. We live in the “it’s art because I say it’s art” era, and we express this by allowing today’s artists freedom of expression. We are generally able to date and categorize older works by their style, such as Baroque or Renaissance, but will we ever be able to look back on any one piece of our most current art and say “that must be a ‘2007’”? Not likely.
Art is meant to arouse emotions and tickle the senses, to give us a chance to bask in the light of creativity and indulge in spectacle, and what better opportunity than that presented to us in the form of the Cornucopia exhibit.

January 10, 2008

Cornucopia for June

Cornucopia: A Bounty of Artistic Delights at Gallery de Boer – Fine Art & Jazz continues. Ron de Boer has put together an eclectic display of over 300 paintings. Unlike traditional shows where all works hang until the end of the show, Cornucopia is constantly evolving. As paintings are sold, new works are added.

Gallery de Boer – Fine Art & Jazz has recently increased the amount of Native Art on display. Up to 30 percent of the gallery will now be of Native and Inuit art.

Ron is excited to announce these new Native artists on display at Gallery de Boer – Fine Art & Jazz:

• Issac Bignell
• Eddie Cobiness
• Goyce Kakegamic
• David Morrisseau
• Norval Morrisseau
• David Williams

Displayed “Salon Style” – floor to ceiling – Cornucopia – A Bounty of Artistic Delights offers hundreds of artworks for viewing. From contemporary to traditional – abstract to realism, there is something for every taste.

Inuit sculptors and printmaking in the last 70 years

Welcome to the Gallery de Boer audio page. Here you will find interesting bits of audio interviews about art, artists and the art world.

In this podcast from the Wichita Art Museum, Ingo Hessel, curator for the exhibition Arctic Spirit, gives a gallery tour discussing Inuit sculptors and printmaking in the last 70 years.

The Louise and S.O. Beren Gallery and the John W. and Mildred L. Graves Gallery, April 6 – July 20, 2008

Approximately 10 minutes.

Monty Python at the Art Gallery

Here’s a little video clip we found on YouTube by the perennially humorous Monty Python. We hope you enjoy this amusing little clip.

However, please don’t think that humor is the only thing you’ll find on the Gallery de Boer video page. Over the coming months we’ll be adding to this page with some original content. Tours of the Gallery, examples of framing and interviews with artists will be some of what we’ll be posting in this section. Please come back soon.

What is Art? -II

…What is Art?
There are several ways you could go on this, but my suspicion is that one will get you better results than the others.
I could tell you that ART plays a large part in making our lives infinitely rich. Imagine, just for a minute, a world without ART! (You may think “So what?”, but please consider the impact that lack of graphics would have on your favorite video game.) ART stimulates different parts of our brains to make us laugh or incite us to riot, with a whole gamut of emotions in between. ART gives us a way to be creative and express ourselves. For some people, ART is the entire reason they get out of bed in the morning.
You could say “ART is something that makes us more thoughtful and well-rounded humans.”
On the other hand, ART is such a large part of our everyday lives, we hardly even stop to think about it. Look at the desk or table where you are, right this minute. Someone designed that. It is ART. Your shoes are ART. Your coffee cup is ART. All functional design, well done, is ART. So, you could say” ART is something that is both functional and (hopefully) aesthetically pleasing to our eyes.”
You might say “ART is in a constant state of change, so nobody can really pin down what it is.” The constant change part is true, but the not pinning it down part is going to get you. It may even raise a comment or two about your being some sort of wisenheimer. Don’t go this route.
You might even say “ART is subjective, and means something different to every single person on earth.” This, too, is the truth, I would caution against this approach, however, as it would require a stack of paper from here to the moon to cite all of your 6.3 billion references.
Now, everything just stated has elements of truth, but is largely based on opinion. My opinion is, frankly, useless. Form your own opinions and be sure to sprinkle them in your answer…which needs a factual basis…to be continued in the next issue…References – many!