Reflections on a good year and a special Christmas Offer

Reflections on a good year and a special Christmas Offer

As we come closer to the end of the calendar year, I can finally take a pause to reflect upon my years’ activities to see how I have grown and how my practise has developed and changed.

With two solo shows, several group shows, a few commissions and a new shop on my website all behind me, I feel very content and full. I am also very excited to turn the corner and see what’s ahead as I begin to explore new ways of working with mixed media and adding the figure back into my work.

I also would like to expand my scale and create more space both physically in my current 200 square foot studio as well as create space in my work.  I’m not exactly certain what this means just yet but I am pretty sure that I will become more physically engaged with my work as the scale shifts.

I am very thankful to all of you who have supported me either through attending shows, commenting on social media or buying my work. It is all important to me and enables me to move forward.

I would like to draw your attention to a special Christmas offer that I thought you might be interested in and please share this with your friends, neighbours, co-workers and family.

I will be wrapping any purchase in Christmas fabric with a bow and hand-delivering it to your door before Christmas if you live within the city of Toronto for FREE. I will pay $10.00 towards the cost of your shipping costs if you decide to go that route.  The total costs will change depending upon the size and weight of your purchase. Please contact me for details.

2020 is going to be a good year. I can feel it and I hope that you can too.


Bernadette


Upcoming Solo Show - Recent Landscapes

ARTIST STATEMENT

The landscapes in this show were created as a series of variations and interpretations of each other. I created the initial 12”x12” paintings based on working on location as well as from photos that I took of a particular local.

I then created the smaller 5”x5” pieces from looking at the original 12” squ paintings creating one step away from the original source.

Then I created several larger palette knife paintings in oil (30”squ) from the tiny ones to see how each step away from the original would alter these images.

I also used different media and tools as I changed the scale to see what the effects would be.

I am now pushing these images further by creating painted layers to further work the idea of mutation by varying my materials and mediums.

My art is an ongoing journey in which I seek to explore new ways to express what I see around me. 


I hope to see old and new faces at this next show.




Upcoming Solo Show - Perimeter


“Perimeter” 
Recent Work by Bernadette Peets 
March 28 - April 7
Opening reception March 30th, 7pm-11:30pm

Hashtag Gallery: 830 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario

This current body of work started with the window installation piece entitled “All Are Welcome” that I created for the Akin Collective in 2018.

I have been exploring the significance that the Canadian landscape holds for me as subject matter in my painting for some time now.

As I followed what seemed to be an endless stream of news stories recounting tales of disenfranchised refugees from other parts of the world fleeing their own lands in search of safety, I began to wonder what ideas these people might have about landscapes other than their own, and more specifically about our Canadian landscapes, in light of their unfortunate set of circumstances.

On the face if it, our country is a vast, beautiful place with plenty of space and natural beauty. It holds the promise of freedom, jobs, security and a new start for refugees seeking asylum here.

While I believe many Canadians would consider themselves to be open and welcoming people, I sense that there is an undercurrent of dis-ease among some Canadians with respect to wholeheartedly welcoming and accepting disenfranchised refugees as potential full-fledged citizens of Canada. Some very real obstacles and barriers exist that are thrown up to thwart the efforts of newly landed refugees attempting to experience full acceptance and integration into Canadian Society.

Although the Canadian landscape is open, wild and vast, with ample living space to share, I’m not sure that we all have fully embraced this concept when it comes to ‘sharing space’ with newly landed refugees.

I have chosen the medium of paint, my love of Nature, and depicting the Canadian landscape as starting points from which to launch a visual exploration of the topic of Canada and its relationship to the disenfranchised newly arrived refugee. My background as a designer for the stage also figures prominently in my choice of idiom for the depiction of this subject. I have placed two-dimensional figures within the ‘landscape constructions’ that I have fabricated to suggest that these newly landed refugees are people whom we do not yet see (experience) in three-dimensions (as human beings, fully equal to ourselves in every way). I have included translucent barriers in the form of fences that allow the figures in my constructions to see what they still cannot completely obtain.

The outsides of the boxes have been decorated with motifs that hint at the cultural origins of the figures populating my constructions. This is meant to reflect the cherished hopes held by the newcomers that they might be able to sustain some of the rich cultural heritage brought with them to a new land.

Using Format