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.

Hardy is a nationally-renowned landscape painter associated with the school of Western Canadian landscape painters focused on the Canadian prairies as well as Northern Saskatchewan, on the edge of the Canadian Shield. 

Hardy’s use of metallic pigments adds an ethereal quality to his paintings, capturing the dynamic and ever-changing essence of the Canadian landscape.

Hardy begins his process by creating sketches in the wilderness or from the vantage point of his kayak and canoe. The sketches are used in his studio to recall a specific location, weather and time of day. He then interprets this memory using colour and light.

 A previous Art Junkie post on Gregory Hardy, here.

Gregory Hardy on exhibition at Peter Robertson gallery, here. (through May 8)

His website, here.

NOTE: Hardy is part of a group exhibition through May 8 at Peter Robertson gallery in Edmonton, an exploration of the Canadian landscape through the innovative lenses of contemporary artists. The other artists – Steve Driscoll, Gavin Lynch & David Thauberger – have all been featured on Canadian Art Junkie in the past. See the Peter Robertson gallery exhibition page, here.

During the final decade of his life, artist Gordon Rayner returned to portraiture, creating stirring portraits of himself – some now on exhibition through March 2 at Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto.

In the summer of 2010, the Christopher Cutts Gallery and Gordon Rayner were planning a self-portrait exhibition for the fall. Unexpectedly, Rayner passed away in September of that year, and what was to be a self-portrait show became an exhibition celebrating his career.

Now, after 14 years, the show that was to be, is, the gallery says. “The Illustrated Man” features 12 raw self-portraits of the artist in his final years, completed between 2001 and 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an insightful essay by Canadian art critic Gary Michael Dault.

In the text, Dault describes these evocative self-portraits as “utterly fearless in their unsparing depiction of the hitherto swashbuckling painter now brought low by age, infirmity, by raw, angry wit, and roaring resignation.  He looks like an old lion — with time’s thorn relentlessly piercing him more and more deeply.”

Christopher Cutts Gallery website, here.

Exhibition page, here.

Image at top of post: The Illustrated Man (Self Portrait) 2010, oil on board, 32 x 24 inches

The largest exhibition ever mounted in the 40+ year career of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky opens in London, England later this month. Running Feb. 14 to May 6 at the Saatchi Gallery, it showcases the work of the famed Canadian artist who has dedicated his practice to documenting the impact of human industry on the planet.

I have spent over 40 years bearing witness to the ways in which modern civilization has dramatically transformed our planet. At this time, the awareness of these issues presented by my large format images has never felt more urgent.

Edward Burtynsky

Curated by Marc Mayer, former Director of the National Gallery of Canada and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the exhibition features 94 of Burtynsky’s large-format photographs as well as 13 high-resolution murals, and an augmented reality experience.

Burtynsky’s work is so in demand that it regularly shows in multiple venues at the same time worldwide, as it does at the moment, with shows on now /through spring at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake, the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Germany, Fotografiska Shanghai, at Galerie Springer in Berlin, in Milan, and at the British Film Institute in London in conjunction with the Saatchi exhibition. His work is also held by multiple galleries and corporate and personal collections.

Edward Burtynsky’s website, here.

His exhibition list, here.

Multiple videos on his site focused on a variety of exhibitions and processes, here.

The Saatchi exhibition site, here.

Image at the top of the post: Salinas No. 1, Cadiz, Spain, 2013. Edition: /9
Digital Chromogenic Colour Photograph. 39 x 52″