"Canadianness is a more or less arbitrary way of understanding...artists who live full time in New York are still claimed as Canadian... How these artists relate to the Group of Seven? I don't care!"

Thank the peace that someone else thinks like this, let alone someone established and invited to speak to our class. Chris Downe was a really great speaker to have because he gave our class a different perspective on canadian art than what we have been getting. I understand and appreciate that we need to learn about the figureheads and the big names... but they aren' t the reason that I love art. Its those that don' t stick to the yellow brick road and do some really interesting things... Chris gave us a whole list of them (I got 23 names to look up and fall in love with that, for the most part, I had never heard before!). 

There is always the goal to paint something newer, something better, to create some new revolutionary style and have your name in the newsprints because really, who wants to "hitch up your car to a horse", wouldn't that be going backwards?

What about Art for Arts-sake?! What about just colour and emotion and representation of what you want to represent in a way you want to represent it. There don't have to be rules... isn't that the point?

Ben Reeves

Paul-Emile Borduas

Doug Kirton

Lucy Hogg

Sandra Meigs

Two of my favourite topics in class today - painting with a palette knife (Bourduas) and painting from your dreams.
We also discussed Refus Global... so on that note: Down with reason, make way for magic!

"The Spirit of Texas" Jennifer Morrison

It "...is not a style. It is the cry of a mind turning back on itself" 

- Antonin Artaud

"Burning Giraffe" Salvador Dali

"Conceptualizing dream imagery as a metaphorical narrative is analogous to understanding the underlying meaning of an abstract painting"

-Myron L. Gluckman

I've always had excessively vivid and, well, violent dreams. I'm not a disturbed person or anything like that at all, but almost every night I die in my sleep. I don't watch alot of creepy shows or play violent video games, I don't know if I really buy into the whole "influences of the social media" argument. Everybody thinks differently but one thing is always the same. We are all looking for something; love, money, happiness... I don't know. Maybe my dreams are trying to tell me that I want someone to take care of me and keep me safe. Or maybe I was a serial killer in a previous life and this is my pay back. Who knows. I'm sure that Freud would have some pretty interesting theories though. 

Susanna Shap

The 1930's were a period of transition in the arts - the artist begins to pay more attention to what's going on inside the work, and begins moving away from nationhood and geographically specific art to a more international art scene. In comes Avant-garde.
Aesthetic emotions and significant form become the talk of the proverbial town. Fauvist styles and sentiments had a strong impact on the art of the time.

"And Max, the kind of all wild things, 

was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all" 

- Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

While the fauvist brush stroke may not be continued through the style of the times, the sentiment persists. 

LL Fitzgerald "Pritchard's Fence" 1928

Fitzgerald moves away from the reclusive nature of the group of seven and instead includes scenes of homes and life in his images. However, there are almost entirely abandoned - lonely and cold.  Snow banks waiting to be plaid in and swings waiting to be swung. 

Eerie perfectness. 

Empty habituated landscape. 

Juxtaposition of natural fluidity against geometric houses. 

I've been focusing a lot in my classes lately on public art and its relationship with the community. I have to say though, I wasnt head over heels for some of the works that we looked at, Such as Emanuel Hahn who I find slightly rigid and seemingly trying to recreate classical arts instead of progressing forward. To me, just a bit boring.

There are way more interesting sculptures in Canada then that!

In Vancouver there has been a park that has in it 14 sculptures of Laughing Men, all with unique expressions. Whenever you see them people are hanging off of them or re-enacting the poses or climbing all over them, They get dressed up for holidays and events and are a really well-enjoyed part of the landscape.

My point is that Public art can be just a art of the landscape that nobody ever notices, or they can be interactive and enjoyed and really turn a neighbourhood into a community, even a destination. 

Art during war-time years is typically strongly restricted. The few areas where it is allowed to flourish are typically in promotional or documentary methods. It is during the interbellum where true creativity thrives. I started looking into interbellum art and came across something pretty unrelated but also really cool... Inmate art as promoted by Dr. Jean Lacassagne.

Lacassagne was a doctor who worried about the health and well-being of inmates and prostitutes.He was the son of a law doctor who made many visits to inmates in Lyon, his hometown, and became increasingly interested in tattoo's as an art form. A project through the site Art Without Bars sprung from Jean's work and documentation in this field.

There were restrictions placed on this project to make it more interesting to the inmates, but overall it was a great way to make them feel of better worth and also to encourage them creatively.