Debra Ramsay

A Color of Sumac 2

2014

A Color of Sumac 2 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Roc-Lon - Unframed A colour, found in nature and mixed into paint with the aid of a computer program, is applied to a surface in a...

A Color of Sumac 2 (Abstract Painting) Acrylic on Roc-Lon - Unframed A colour, found in nature and mixed into paint with the aid of a computer program, is applied to a surface in a...

Acrylic on acrylic panel - Unframed This work is from a series started in Feb-Mar 2018 when Ramsay visited Thailand. She collected colors by photographing objects both natural and h...

Acrylic on polyester film - Unframed This piece, part of a series, is the product of bringing together colors that Ramsay specifically mixed for other projects. The colors have one thing in common, they were all selected...

Gorgeous acrylic on paper titled "Schwindle" or "Deception" 1986 by James Sprouse (American, 20th Century). Image 6"H x 9"W. Sheet, 12"H x 18"W. Unframed and with acid free neutral color mat. Sprouse minimalist approach to monochrome objects and colors are rare treasures. Currently a New York based artist. He was born in Chicago and received a Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US, including the Soap Box Gallery, Van Brunt Projects, Robert Anderson Gallery, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Kohler Art Center and 57W57Arts. His work has been featured in Details Magazine...

Hackett’s paintings defy popular convention. They are not figurative, decorative, representative, or even completely abstract. While it is hard to tie them to any one style or movement, they manage to be a part of all of them. Hackett’s work is influenced by pattern, midcentury design, art of indigenous peoples, and the art and craft movement, combined with a loose examination of the natural world. She creates a visual environment that is both recognizable yet strangely mysterious. While steeped in art history and influenced by a range of artists from Miro to Arthur Dove, Charles Burchfield, Agnes Pelton, Florine Stettheimer...

Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper, a rusted stove—is juxtaposed with the soft glow of a yellow circle. This continues Houston’s ongoing use of colour to question the particulars of perception. Heritage of All, White with Greed and Iron, and The Spaces we Breath, Houston’s titles read like lines of a haiku. Composed as prose, they are also confrontational, mapping out the cultural and environmental impacts of the extraction of resources in the Arctic. We witness scenes of violent decay, and yet simply carry on, like Business As Usual. In What Nations Come and Go a pale purple oval nearly fills the frame, revealing only in the very far right a simple cabin in front of a rocky incline. A similar imposing cloud of colour, this time blue, dominates the landscape in Mapped, Claimed, and Evaluated. The north is just as much an idea as it is a place, and is one that looms large in the Canadian imagination. There are few better examples than Glenn Gould...

Aleksandra Szewczuk, born in 1982 in Gdynia, Poland, is a distinguished contemporary painter whose work delves into the realms of psychological and abstract expression. Her technique...