The Painting Project: A Snapshot of Painting in Canada

The following questions concern works shown in the exhibition. Write down what you observe about each work and then compare your notes to the answers.

Question 1: What sort of setting does Jack Bishop illustrate in revisiting the Canadian landscape tradition?

Question 2: What type of space does Dil Hildebrand depict in this work?

Question 3: What is Tammi Campbell’s intention in making it appear that this work is not finished and that a final line remains to be painted before the masking tape can be removed?

Question 4: What does Ben Reeves’s painting Detail – Laurel Street represent?

Question 5: What gives this work a sculptural quality?

Question 6: What role does writing play in this work by Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber?

Question 7: What makes this work a hybrid creation?

Question 8: Which elements of this composition refer to the encounter of two cultures?

Question 9: Which aspects of this painting lend it a fictional quality?

Question 1 : Answer

Jack Bishop revisits the Canadian landscape tradition in terms not of natural but of commercial space, where ubiquitous retail outlets dictate use of the land and proclaim its occupation. The densely crowded compositions map out a geography of anonymity, a sort of nowhere typical of the outskirts of large North American cities.

Question 2 : Answer

Unlike the artist’s earlier works, this window opens neither onto the world nor onto the landscape. Instead, it offers an introspective view of a closed space, a space of creation, where the “doing” of painting takes place.

Question 3 : Answer

Masking tape is generally associated with the hard-edge technique, where it is used as a tool to execute perfectly straight lines and geometric shapes. In representing it here, the artist highlights the production process and challenges the viewer’s power of observation.

Question 4 : Answer

Detail – Laurel Street is part of a new series of works whose motifs are at once hyper-figurative and abstract. It is an enlarged detail of a scene set on Laurel Street, in the artist’s neighbourhood. He has framed one of the raindrops from that scene and reproduced it using thick daubs of paint and heavy brushstrokes. The painting is thus self-referential, in that the earlier work has become the subject of new exploration.

Question 5 : Answer

Although DaveandJenn’s primary medium is painting, their process of accumulation is close to sculpture. Dozens of layers of resin are laid on and condensed into a single image. Each layer brings new elements, adding, overlaying and, necessarily, obliterating others.

Question 6 : Answer

Writing plays a key role in Michael Dumontier & Neil Farber’s artistic approach. It provides a context for the image, with the carefully chosen words serving as a sort of punch line. The text is added at the end of the process and usually determines the picture’s meaning. It is through the text that the narrative of each work is revealed, and that the reason for the conversation between a carrot and a little black figure can be deduced.

Question 7 : Answer

By combining the languages of installation and sculpture, the artist takes painting beyond its traditional two dimensions. Visitors can move around inside the work, which is hybrid because it blends two artistic disciplines.

Question 8 : Answer

Joseph Tisiga has revisited Native iconography in paintings where two worlds – First Nations and Western – coexist and interact. This painting opens a door to the artist’s imaginary world through the figure of Red Chief. Seated at a campfire, the chief appears to be in conversation with the ghost of an ancestor. The apparition wears a traditional feather headdress, while the chief sports a top hat and Western clothes. The juxtaposition of different cultural codes illustrates the dislocation of First Nations peoples, caught between two worlds.

Question 9 : Answer

This work pictures real-life elements and is based largely on current events, but the characters’ attitudes, the painting style and the enigmatic action create a sense of hallucination. Also, the faces are masked or obscured, which contributes to the threatening appearance of the represented place.