I wandered around Granville Island today and stumbled into this lovely artist's gallery in the Railspur Alley area. (I had passed this studio before a few times over the past few years but I don't recall it being open before). I realize art is super subjective, so what I personally like might not be another's cup of tea. But I LOVE this artist's works! She has a lot of florals (and I'm not usually a floral kind of person), and these works really talked to me: the blues and the bold pinks of the peonies (not pastel colors. I'm not a fan of pastels), the reds of the poppies... I just loved it all. And it's not just the subjects or the colors that I found appealing; there was also the technique, using an encaustic method à la Jasper Johns (the name of the artist eluded me earlier when I was speaking to the artist, but I remember studying about this encaustic process decades ago, when I took art history classes, and I remembered Johns using this technique with hot wax and paints and how involved it was). Impressing and fairly unique nowadays. The result here is a heavily textured canvas, almost appearing as if the paints were applied with pallet knife as opposed to brushes, and the layering of thick layer upon layer of paints, making the boldly colored flowers appear to be alive and moving in some invisible breeze. They just spoke to me.
This artist also had a lot of ceramics on display and for sale - mostly still life-like vegetables and fruits, but my favorite were these larger-than-lifesize detailed black crows. They were heavily glazed and incredibly detailed, down to the textures on each feather. I loved the crows. And there were lots of smaller door knocker pieces and wall-mounted hooks, all in bronze (or perhaps another metal), in the shape of female torsos or mermaids, and smaller tabletop busts of women's torsos and forms.
There were lots of people in this studio when I visited, and the artist herself was lovely and very engaging, and I can see how her artwork would be appealing to a lot of people. read more
