Carol Wainio wins Governor-General’s award

Ottawa artist Carol Wainio is one of eight Canadian artists awarded this year’s Governor-General’s award for the visual arts, announced Tuesday. Above: Puss in the Subcontinent (#11) , 2009, acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 254 cm, collection of the artist. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

“Layering fairy tale illustrations, children’s drawings and images from mass culture, she creates new narratives, dark and sad, in which the enchantment of the fairy tales is lost amid the discarded refuse of a consumerist society,” the Canada Council said in announcing the award. Above: Boy, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 182.88 x 304.8 cm, collection of the artist. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Carol Wainio, Season’s End, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 198.12 x 304.8 cm, collection of the artist. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

During an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Wainio, a professor at the University of Ottawa, references a painting (above) that portrayed Lord Grey, a governor-general of Canada in 1904, dressed as Puss in Boots. “The painting, titled The Governor General and the Fox, is quintessential Wainio, layered and narrative, at first glance like some surreal fairy tale and slowly revealed as a broad contemplation of social and cultural issues,” writes Peter Simpson, arts editor at The Citizen.