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Judith BerryFissure2025
2025
$3,800
£2,844.10
€3,293.29
CA$5,281.38
A$5,948.62
CHF 3,080.58
MX$72,243.60
NOK 39,130.43
SEK 37,118.51
DKK 24,572.44
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About the Item
Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lush, painterly oils are meditations on the colour green—sap green, olive green, vert tendre—bathed in the warm light of the golden hour. These works represent the concretization of nature, an evolution which contains traces of past forms incarnating as if they are still in transition. The figures in these portraits have a tenuous hold on reality. There is an oneiric energy here, a sense that the animal and human forms are mid manifestation and could easily change back into abstractions or plant life.
Most remarkable about Berry’s new body of work is the equine (re)emergence. Horses have been a part of human history for millennia, they represent control and freedom, power and its lack. They’ve been used for transportation, war, entertainment, as well as deeply appreciated for their beauty; they are powerful creatures able to run at incredible speeds, yet as prey, they are easily spooked. In Portrait with Horse and Pumpkin, a figure offers a bucket of water containing the reflection of a pumpkin to a masked horse. Guardians shows two horses, sentinels or oracles, standing by a liminal frontier. Their coats and hoods give a dual impression of protection and restriction. In The World Upside Town Triptych a horse is on its back in a posture of joy, vulnerability, or defeat. Long, multicoloured bead-like strands of colour that often appeared in Berry’s past paintings slither across the canvas. The coats of the horses are dotted with tiny shrubbery, giving the sense that the animal itself is a landscape.
Landscape Hood reveals a being whose red core is obscured by curtain-like hair overgrown with neat rows of vegetation. This figure could be a priest of a mushroom cult in some otherworldly dimension. In Double Portrait with Blocks two figures are cut through with red, the red interiors in many of these works call to mind the hidden pulse of blood within bodies. Attached to their heads are blocks which could represent thoughts or energy blockages. Fissure conjures a landscape that is destroyed even as it is imagined.
Berry has a notable interest in fusing and deconstructing forms, proven by her longstanding investigation into the dynamic between abstraction and figuration. Her surreal symbolic language that is emerging now is poetic and evocative, an analysis of the way forms come into being and of the interconnectedness of life. In Portrait, identities are obscured, but the energies and structures underlying things is revealed. There is a quiet strangeness in these paintings, along with an eerie sense of proximity to the primordial soup of creation. The paintings in Portrait aren’t portraits in any kind of traditional sense; there are no identities, there are no individual personalities being intimated. Yet they are figurations of beings all the same, perhaps catalogued as an artist-anthropologist might document their discoveries in some foreign land.
Judith Berry was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and spent one year in the Studio Program at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. She has had solo exhibitions across Canada in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa. Judith has also shown in numerous group exhibitions including exhibitions at the Musée du Québec and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. She has received funding from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council. Her work is in various collections including: the Musee du Québec, the City of Ottawa, the City of Montreal, the Royal Bank, and the Art Bank of the Canada Council. She has served as a jury member for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the City of Ottawa.
- Creator:Judith Berry (1961, Canadian)
- Creation Year:2025
- Dimensions:Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 36 in (91.44 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Montreal, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU47616251562
Judith Berry
Judith Berry was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and spent one year in the Studio Program at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. She has had solo exhibitions across Canada in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa. Judith has also shown in numerous group exhibitions including exhibitions at the Musée du Québec and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. She has received funding from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council. Her work is in various collections including: the Musee du Québec, the City of Ottawa, the City of Montreal, the Royal Bank, and the Art Bank of the Canada Council. She has served as a jury member for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the City of Ottawa.
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By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
The themes visited in this show stem from a desire to extend the vocabulary of my painting while forming a metaphor for the chaos of contemporary life.
The title, Escalade, has differing and complimentary functions in English and French. Continuing to paint, over a lengthening career, the medium poses more questions than answers. The title is a reference to my attempt to overcome these difficulties through the expansion of my painting language. The title also refers to the escalation of crises in the world at large. It is the larger picture in which I am a small person trying to make my way.
In a concrete sense, the title also refers to a strategy I have taken in a number of these paintings. That is, to re-examine very small paintings...
Category
2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Outskirts
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
I think of my paintings primarily as landscapes. Recently, these landscapes appear to be more manufactured than organic. At first glance the subjects seem to be monumental forms such...
Category
2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings
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Oil, Wood Panel
Finding a Way Forward
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
The artist thinks of their paintings primarily as landscapes. Lately, these landscapes have taken on a more manufactured feel rather than organic. At first glance, the subjects may a...
Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
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Finding a Way Forward
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...
Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel
Straining to Hear
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
I think of my paintings primarily as landscapes. Recently, these landscapes appear to be more manufactured than organic. At first glance the subjects seem to be monumental forms such...
Category
2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel
Longing
By Judith Berry
Located in Montreal, Quebec
I think of my paintings primarily as landscapes. Recently, these landscapes appear to be more manufactured than organic. At first glance the subjects seem to be monumental forms such...
Category
2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil, Wood Panel
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