Border guards saw racist items in neo-Nazi truck, sparking probes: report
Damien Hirst’s Latest Conceptual Feat? Painting the Canvases Himself
On Thursday night in Los Angeles, hundreds of people crowded outside Gagosian’s Beverly Hills outpost, trying to get a peek at Damien Hirst’s brand new neon-gumball-toned paintings exploding with color. An hour in, the space was at capacity, with entrance available only through a backdoor that takes visitors through the guts of the gallery’s storage and then at once to the gigantic echo chamber of an atrium, where the works hung enormous and ran to the upper reaches of the walls, 15 feet above when taken at a distance. The small scooplets of thick paint splotches on canvas came together to approximate, in the paintings, a classic bucolic landscape, the sky over rolling hills.
The landscape on the ground at Gagosian was more cosmopolitan. The 76-year-old media macher Barry Diller (net worth: $3.2 billion, per Forbes) was chatting with 27-year-old Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel (net worth: $3.9 billion, per Forbes) while collectors such as Maja Hoffmann, Benedikt Taschen, and Bill and Maria Arena Bell swanned about. LACMA director Michael Govan was there, Jeffrey Deitch put in an appearance now that he’s once again opening a Los Angeles space, and there was Victoria Siddall, the director of Frieze Fairs, which recently announced the opening of a third fair here in Los Angeles, at Paramount Studios (Siddall said she is already struggling to deal with an onslaught of galleries fighting to get in).
There were models—Karlie Kloss, Miranda Kerr—and there were rock stars—Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers—and there was Hans Zimmer, the composer guy who did the score for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Artists were there, too, in support of one of their own brethren who had long ago made himself into into a global brand: Carol Bove, Jordan Wolfson, Jonas Wood, Jennifer Guidi, Alex Israel, and Mary Weatherford, who rather admired the muscular touch on the canvas, the way the paint was whipped up in spots like a cowlick haircut.
“It’s very difficult to do that, to make it stay like that, but Damien is the master,” she said.
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Gallery preview
Far Away Places
by Margie Lucier
● Warehouse Artworks, 222 McDermot Ave.
● Sept. 6-20
● Free admission
● Monday to Friday 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Margie Lucier specializes in exactly that, with landscapes painted on small canvases only two inches by two inches in size.
A 27-year-old artist born and raised in Winnipeg, Lucier has been drawn to art for as long as she can remember. As her passion grew, she began to focus on painting.
Her newest solo exhibit, Far Away Places, debuts Friday, Sept. 6, as part of First Fridays in the Exchange.
Lucier has no formal art training, but that hasn’t stopped her from paving her own way as an artist.
“I learned by practising often, also trial and error. I developed my own techniques over time,” she says.
Her artistic influences include Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, English naturalistic landscape painter John Constable and John Everett Millais, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their distinctive styles contributed to the development of Lucier’s own vision.
“Looking at reference photos of landscapes really helped me learn,” she says.
“A couple of the paintings I’ve done for my exhibit are based on photos I’ve seen of Iceland. I hope to travel there someday soon. It would be wonderful to take my own photos out there to use as reference photos for my paintings.”
What makes Lucier’s paintings stand out from the crowd is their size. Working on a canvas with a total area slightly smaller than a credit card requires extremely detail-oriented and precise work.
“I have always enjoyed adding tiny details in my paintings,” she says. “I started painting on my tiny canvases as a challenge to myself to see how much detail I can pack into two inches.”
Her focus on detail has been both a blessing and a curse.
“When I work on my larger paintings, they would take me months to complete because of how I focus on small details,” she explains. “Working on one painting for months would make me feel burnt out, I would work for hours a day and not be able to see much progress.”
Although initially conceived as a way of practising her technique, the experiment with a smaller canvas size turned out to be a creative solution to a common problem amongst artists: the dreaded artist block.
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/09/2019 (1526 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
You’ve probably heard of tiny houses, but have you ever heard of tiny paintings?
Walk offers exploration of restorations
Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Thursday, Sep. 5, 2019
In April, after the fire at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral was finally put out, controversy ignited over how best to respond to the devastating damage.
Experts, architects and ordinary citizens weighed in. Some wanted to rebuild, as closely as possible, the structure as it was. Some suggested an ultra-modern response, while others wanted to leave it as a ruin. As arguments flared, the debate brought into focus the many practical, esthetic and ethical questions surrounding architectural restoration.
At this month’s First Fridays in the Exchange Art Talk/Art Walk, we’ll be speaking with James Wagner, a Winnipeg architect who has worked on heritage projects, and Susan Algie, director of the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, about case studies in conservation, restoration and adaptive reuse here in our own city. How do big news stories like the Notre Dame connect to our local issues, as Manitobans discuss the fate of the Hudson’s Bay store, the Public Safety Building or the historic mansion currently being fought over on Wellington Crescent?
When it comes to the Notre Dame example, the first question involves the status of the original. “Which ‘original’ are we talking about?” Wagner asks. Notre Dame took almost 200 years to build and then changed over ensuing centuries, including an 1800s restoration that caused its own controversy.
“I bought them at first to challenge myself and focus on improving my fine details even more. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with painting on small canvases. I could work on one for hours and have it completed,” Lucier says.
“That gave me satisfaction and allowed me to bring more of my ideas to life. I now switch between painting miniatures and larger paintings. This helps relieve any artist block I struggle with.”
Working on smaller canvases also created a need for the right brushes for the job.
“I use a mix of tiny round brushes and thin long paintbrushes called script liners,” shares Lucier.
“The round brushes I use to cover bigger areas of the canvas and the script liners are used to make fine lines and details. I also need to make sure I have steady hands while working. Any little slip-up can cause big issues on a canvas so small.”
The theme of Far Away Places is foreign landscapes.
“For this exhibit, I created works that feature vast mountainscapes and oceans. Some scenes were inspired by Iceland, like their black sand beaches and their iconic black chapel in a little village called Búðir. Other paintings were inspired by desert landscapes, or a valley between mountains,” she says.
“I am very inspired by nature and landscapes that are something we don’t normally see living in the prairies.”
And Lucier isn’t content to simply paint landscapes from here on Earth — she also finds inspiration in the stars.
“I took the idea of faraway places even further by creating works inspired by outer space. In my collection of 50 tiny paintings, I have painted our solar system, a nebula and shooting stars. I have also incorporated the Milky Way into a large majority of my paintings.”
Lucier runs an Etsy shop that sells prints of her artwork as well as jewelry. Her work can also be seen on Instagram.
Far Away Places opens Sept. 6 at Warehouse Artworks from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. as a part of First Fridays in the Exchange. It runs until Sept. 20.
Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter
The Warm-Up
Winnipeg Jets Game Days
On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop.
Frances Koncan
Arts reporter
Frances Koncan (she/her) is a writer, theatre director, and failed musician of mixed Anishinaabe and Slovene descent. Originally from Couchiching First Nation, she is now based in Treaty 1 Territory right here in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
