Gary Pearson’s solo show at Gallery Jones in Vancouver demonstrates his strong graphic sensibility and his stark, spare, linear style.

Pearson paints characters and scenes that reflect his interest in the transitional nature of life.

Urban spaces such as cafes, bars, hotel lobbies and city parks are presented as generic and unremarkable, apt backdrops for the mundane moments unfolding for the characters on his canvases. Executed in a purposefully crude and repetitive style, his subjects are deliberately unspectacular, and reminiscent of a casual snapshot – gallery notes.

Pearson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna. He received his M.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and his B.F.A. from the University of Victoria. He has been exhibiting internationally since 1983, and has been collected by such institutions as the Canada Council Art Bank, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Morris & Helen Belkin Gallery, UBC, Vancouver.

His works at Gallery Jones, here.

His Instagram, here.

Quebec artist Jacinthe Rivard took the DeSerres prize for painting at the 2024 Artist Project in Toronto, not a surprise given the popularity of her colorful contemporary work. She calls it nostalgic realism in oil.

Her muse is the light: “I love the way it reflects on a glass bottle, metal or even a plastic wrapper.”

Jacinthe Rivard’s website, here.

Instagram, here.

The Artist Project, 2024, here.

Two of the most recognized artists in Modern Art are examined together for the first time in an exhibition of over 120 works that underscores their similarities. Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore both had a powerful relationship with the natural world, evident in most of their works.

Both O’Keeffe and Moore were pioneers in their approaches to Modernism. Focusing on natural forms, they collected various objects such as animal skulls, bones, tree roots, and seashells, which served as inspiration for their art. Bones were an essential part of Moore’s approach to sculpture.

The exhibition also offers their re-created studios, complete with original contents of found objects, tools, and furnishings, providing a glimpse into the creative processes of both artists.

The exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is a travelling collaboration organized by the San Diego Museum of Art with the Henry Moore Foundation, Much Hadham, England, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The San Diego Museum’s synopsis from the inaugural exhibition is worth a read, below.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition site, here.

The Montreal exhibition runs through June 2, 2024

You would be on target if this painting felt like looking down from the air. It’s by artist Mike Fantuz, who draws inspiration from his extensive experience in aviation as an air traffic controller and pilot. (Above: Discovered Within, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 72″)

Born in Guelph, Ontario and raised in Calgary, Fantuz was always captivated by the world from above. He pursued a career as a pilot, flying skydivers in northern British Columbia before relocating to Newfoundland as an air-traffic controller.

In his Vancouver studio, Fantuz uses the palette knives of his late grandfather, Gastone Fantuz, an artist trained at the Banff School who was a draftsperson for the A.V.Roe company, where he worked on projects such as the Avro Arrow.

Well known known for the bold, thick application of paint on his striking, large-scale paintings, he is represented by the Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he is currently on exhibition in a group show.

Mike Fantuz’s website, here.