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Annette Blady
Happy Party 45" x 30"

2024

About the Item

With a vision of paintings that literally break free of the canvas, Blady + Van Mil invented moulage (molded collage) through experimentation in the early days of the pandemic. It became their way of holding onto positivity as the enormity of the crisis was revealed. Collage captured the idea that many small actions add up to new hope. Moulding the canvas – allowing it to rise and flow – gave momentum to that feeling. Also propelling this new technique was the artists’ desire to reinvent the preciousness embedded in the fine arts paradigm. To create each moulage, they purposely cut up many of their own prized works into small pieces. Professional collaborators, married for 40 years, Blady + Van Mil always start with a big idea and play together to see where it might go, accepting both success and failure as drivers of progress. “In a year of turmoil and division, we realized we couldn’t change other people’s mindset, just our own. We began by dismantling our past works – with scissors – and were set free.” Annette Blady was born in Toronto, Canada. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1980. In the following decade, partnering with Van Mil in an architectural model making company, she rose to international prominence as an interior designer. Her work included model suites for major condominium projects such as The Nieman Marcus Centre in Chicago, Harbourfront in Toronto, and The World Financial Centre in Battery Park, New York City. Blady moved on from design work in 1989 to pursue a full-time career in fine art. Exhibiting internationally, Blady’s canvases can now be found in many prominent galleries and private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. Her eclectic style uses textured exotic papers and fabrics, cut glass, and metallic acrylic, as mixed media collage painting. She links motifs from ancient symbolism with those of modern design and abstract expressionism. Blady’s 3D encaustic works, incorporating paper and fabric, are unique and have sold internationally. These works informed the moulage technique co-invented for Rising from the Canvas, 2020. “For me art is about expressing eclectic, collective, and painterly passions.” Alphons Van Mil was born on the Isle of Texel, in the Netherlands, to a family of aspiring artists. For most of the last 50 years, Al Van Mil has created visual artworks using a large variety of mediums, including acrylic or oil paint on large canvases. His works range from landscapes and portraits as abstracted emotions, to eclectic hybrids of any conceptually appealing ideas. Van Mil received mentoring from Conceptual Artist Eric Cameron while studying Fine Art at the University of Guelph. He was first inspired by the conceptual Canadian artists couple of Joyce Wieland and Michael Snow. Creating art full time since he graduated, Van Mil’s work has been exhibited in private and public galleries, including the Musee Des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, The National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. His earlier paintings were inspired by the mixed metaphors of the Pop artist James Rosenquist, which drove him to develop a broad vocabulary of original styles to juxtapose. The Abstract Expressionist architecture of Frank Gehry also influenced his later work. Van Mil’s eclectic conceptual approach was further influenced by the poetry of E. E. Cummings, and by the cool improvisations of BeBop Jazz artist Miles Davis. Van Mil honed his approaches by painting onstage as a Performance Artist with the multi-genre improvisational arts group called Collaborations. He co-designed sets for many performances, and shared the stage with many prominent Canadian musicians, dancers and opera stars. Van Mil was commissioned to paint the portraits of the two MVP winners by the Toronto Blue Jays for the two years when they won their consecutive baseball titles. He also illustrated the CLA Book of the Year Award winning title, ‘The Tiny Kite of Eddy Wing,’ a children’s book written by Maxine Trottier. Commercial as well as fine art projects broadened Van Mil’s interests over the years, producing works for international clientele chiefly from Chicago through to Toronto, to New York, and down the eastern seaboard to Atlanta. Partnering with Blady and others, Van Mil founded and ran an architectural model-making company for 6 years called Architectural Dimensions, named one of the top three in the world by New York magazine. Blady + Van Mil’s expertise gained in 3D modeling further informed the moulage technique they co-invented for this Rising from the Canvas series, 2020.
  • Creator:
    Annette Blady (Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2024
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 45 in (114.3 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)Depth: 6 in (15.24 cm)
  • Medium:
    Mixed Media,Acrylic,Canvas
  • Movement & Style:
    Abstract
  • Period:
    21st Century
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Toronto, CA
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: BVA01061stDibs: LU1877214083722
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