Deanna Fogstrom
"Top of The Town"
Artist Statement
The Top of the Town
Walking through the concrete canyons of Vancouver prompts me to look up and as I do I imagine what it is like to be there, way up there, at the top of our world class city. Being so close to the sky, the light, the ride to the top of the sky scrapers; does is create a new dimension of experience? Beauty? Power? It certainly provides a special point of view. What is actually up there? With the help of my camera’s zoom lens I can get a closer view of the top of buildings like the Dominion Building, the Hotel Vancouver, the Vancouver Block Clock, the Marine Building, the Sun Building and the Woodwards W. All of these structures are distinctive markers of place even though they are overshadowed by the higher, newer towers that are constantly emerging around us.
The historic architecture of Vancouver is not as prominent as it once was, but still holds a dignified place in our city. Along with exploring distinctive features of these landmarks I can’t help noticing how the glass windows which surround them play with the architect’s geometry and change rigid lines and right angled corners into swirling, moving shapes. Along with this distortion and movement, in my work I seek to establish a visual contrast to the grey concrete and cloudy skies with injections of vibrant colour.
Two significant influences for my work are Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings and the brilliant colour schemes of the Finnish design company Marimekko. Wayne Thiebaud's creative interpretation and colourful renderings of San Francisco spark my imagination. Recently I noticed how vibrant colours and large simple patterns of Marimekko fabric from the 1960s and 1970s have crept into my paintings. These resources and experiences form the inspiration for my paintings of Vancouver’s streets, buildings, patterns and symbols as reflected in its windows and other reflective surfaces.
At the heart of my practice is the desire to pause, resist rushing forward at inhuman speeds and take time to see and think about the world around me. In our digitized, media filtered and hurried lives we become less and less able to stop and look back. My paintings and photography are designed to evoke memory, imagination and emotion.
Walking through the concrete canyons of Vancouver prompts me to look up and as I do I imagine what it is like to be there, way up there, at the top of our world class city. Being so close to the sky, the light, the ride to the top of the sky scrapers; does is create a new dimension of experience? Beauty? Power? It certainly provides a special point of view. What is actually up there? With the help of my camera’s zoom lens I can get a closer view of the top of buildings like the Dominion Building, the Hotel Vancouver, the Vancouver Block Clock, the Marine Building, the Sun Building and the Woodwards W. All of these structures are distinctive markers of place even though they are overshadowed by the higher, newer towers that are constantly emerging around us.
The historic architecture of Vancouver is not as prominent as it once was, but still holds a dignified place in our city. Along with exploring distinctive features of these landmarks I can’t help noticing how the glass windows which surround them play with the architect’s geometry and change rigid lines and right angled corners into swirling, moving shapes. Along with this distortion and movement, in my work I seek to establish a visual contrast to the grey concrete and cloudy skies with injections of vibrant colour.
Two significant influences for my work are Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings and the brilliant colour schemes of the Finnish design company Marimekko. Wayne Thiebaud's creative interpretation and colourful renderings of San Francisco spark my imagination. Recently I noticed how vibrant colours and large simple patterns of Marimekko fabric from the 1960s and 1970s have crept into my paintings. These resources and experiences form the inspiration for my paintings of Vancouver’s streets, buildings, patterns and symbols as reflected in its windows and other reflective surfaces.
At the heart of my practice is the desire to pause, resist rushing forward at inhuman speeds and take time to see and think about the world around me. In our digitized, media filtered and hurried lives we become less and less able to stop and look back. My paintings and photography are designed to evoke memory, imagination and emotion.
BIO
Creating + showing art = experiencing community. My daily experience of urban life and the souls who influence me create a fertile ground for my work. I seek to capture daily life’s energy, patterns, colour, and identity through paintings and photographs which explore a city’s distinctive features. Painting and photography have been the focus of my creative practice since completing a BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Urban life produces constant animation, diversity and change. How do we move forward and grow without losing buildings which demonstrate the work of those who have gone before us? Along with co-curating an exhibition of 18 female artists entitled “How Nice to Have a Hobby” (2014) I attended the Finnish artist residency, AARK.fi (2018), then wandered through Paris seeking inspiration for another body of work, Paris, Love and Protest. In addition to ECUAD (BFA, Visual Arts) I studied Applied Linguistics (MA), Concordia University, as well as French (BA) and Education (Professional Teacher Certificate) at Simon Fraser University. I am proud to have taught in the public school system of British Columbia.
Yaletown Dark Shade; Climbing Up the Woodward's W; Art Gallery Ombrellas
(click to see full image)
(click to see full image)
Stanley Mishkin
"Sunsets Across Vancouver"
Artist Statement
I moved to Vancouver in April 2000. I was immediately struck with how depressing the climate here was for it rained continually for about three weeks with barely a break in the clouds. The climate would eventually change to clear and temperate spring weather that reminded me of life growing up in the UK. Then over the summer months I was treated to some of the most spectacular sunsets I had ever seen by simply looking out from my balcony. To those of you from the prairies this would be nothing new but I was from London and then Toronto where such spectacular skies were a much rarer occurrence and easy to miss unless you happen to be picnicking in a city park with an unobscured horizon.
Like many people I took photographs of the sunsets but the prints hardly came close to what I had experienced seeing. A good or professional photographer with a tripod, exposure compensation and various filters would have produced far more memorable prints than I could ever have done. Now some twenty years later we have cameras with incredible digital capacity that can record a spectacular sunset in the hands of an amateur with an IPhone.
So why paint sunsets?
Photographs we carry are ubiquitous images and not often seen in a printed format. They are mostly an endless “roll” of spontaneous moments stored on our camera phones shared with a click and hardly viewed for more than a couple of seconds. It’s a poor substitute for being in the moment watching a Vancouver sunset and seeing how fast and dramatically the sky can change.
These paintings, seen at their best here under gallery lighting, offer a different viewing experience, one that allows for more contemplation and perhaps an interpretation that can be visually poetic notwithstanding that photography was used in recording the inspiration for this series of eight paintings. The reference photos for paintings 1 and 2 were shot on colour print film and for painting 3 it was B&W film with a quick sketch and colour notes made at the scene. Paintings 4, 5, 6 and 8 were recorded with an old Canon pocket digital camera. Painting 7 was done from memory bar the foreground which I shot in the daytime and then transposed to dusk on the canvas without any photo. None of these paintings were simply copied from the reference material, rather I have recomposed them to varying degrees in preparatory studies with foreground changes and colour and tonal enhancements to satisfy my personal aesthetic.
Like many people I took photographs of the sunsets but the prints hardly came close to what I had experienced seeing. A good or professional photographer with a tripod, exposure compensation and various filters would have produced far more memorable prints than I could ever have done. Now some twenty years later we have cameras with incredible digital capacity that can record a spectacular sunset in the hands of an amateur with an IPhone.
So why paint sunsets?
Photographs we carry are ubiquitous images and not often seen in a printed format. They are mostly an endless “roll” of spontaneous moments stored on our camera phones shared with a click and hardly viewed for more than a couple of seconds. It’s a poor substitute for being in the moment watching a Vancouver sunset and seeing how fast and dramatically the sky can change.
These paintings, seen at their best here under gallery lighting, offer a different viewing experience, one that allows for more contemplation and perhaps an interpretation that can be visually poetic notwithstanding that photography was used in recording the inspiration for this series of eight paintings. The reference photos for paintings 1 and 2 were shot on colour print film and for painting 3 it was B&W film with a quick sketch and colour notes made at the scene. Paintings 4, 5, 6 and 8 were recorded with an old Canon pocket digital camera. Painting 7 was done from memory bar the foreground which I shot in the daytime and then transposed to dusk on the canvas without any photo. None of these paintings were simply copied from the reference material, rather I have recomposed them to varying degrees in preparatory studies with foreground changes and colour and tonal enhancements to satisfy my personal aesthetic.
Bio/CV
Steveston Sunset; Vancouver Sunset #2; Vancouver Sunset #1
(click to see full image)
(click to see full image)
