When We Were
Dawn Owen
Revisiting one of the most enduring Canadian art histories, When We Were features the work of four Guelph-based artists – Scott Abbott, Janette Hayhoe, Jessica Masters, and Kathleen Schmalz – who transpose historical landscape tradition and plein-air technique in contemporary practice informed by their experiences and memories of places both within and beyond the local landscape.
For these artists, landscape is more conceptual and emotive than documentary, although each has engaged the technique of painting ‘in the open air,’ in view of the setting as it is rendered. While landscape implies that the land, as in terra firma, is their primary subject, in the context of When We Were it encompasses earth, water, and air, as well as the constructed and conjured spaces in-between.
Image detail: Scott Abbott, Quiet Reflection-Georgian Bay, 2012, oil on panel; Janette Hayhoe, Sky I, 2017, oil on Mylar; Jessica Masters, Patterns of Tide, 2017, dry pastel on BFK Rives paper dry mounted to Gator Board; Kathleen Schmalz, Back of Arthur Street #2, 2017, acrylic on canvas
Artists
Scott Abott
Janette Hayhoe
Jessica Masters
Kathleen Schmalz
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