Mary Dykstra - Painting series title: Innocent When You Dream
[About]
These paintings are made of filtered memories, snippets of stories, lyrics that landed, waking Technicolor dreams, inspirations embraced, visions tackled.
They offer a plan of action for catching shooting stars before they fade out of sight. Make a wish. Repeat. The wish is to make something as compelling as that shooting star.
In my paintings, you meet characters and make-believe worlds that suggest a story unfolding —pictorial tales with a surreal, nostalgic bent. They take you back to the mid twentieth century, like music from an old record player. There is static and distortion, but also warmth. They revisit familiar places but everything is altered by experience, by memory, and is haunted by mutations of characters you met back in childhood.
In these worlds, all is well and good, as long as you indulge the ghosts from time to time. They come to play.
Cash and Carry with Lorette C. Luzajic- Q and A
Who are you and what are you all about?
I’m an artist and writer who has called Toronto home for around 25 years. Most of my creativity is expressed through writing, mixed media collage art, and photography. I’m obsessed by written words and by imagery, and use both in my artwork and my writing.
What is Cash and Carry all about?
The idea for Cash and Carry was all about creating an eclectic, riotous hodgepodge of small works that were cheep and cheerful. Using the language of commercial mass production marketing is my way of overstepping the taboos about showing and selling art. I wanted a show where anyone could afford a piece if they liked it, and take it with them right away, instead of waiting for the show to end. I will be showing a few large statement pieces, but I wanted lots to look at lots in the range of 25$ to 100$. This was also a creative challenge for me. What would come out of me if I acted as a one woman creative assembly line? How would they be different from my larger scale works? How would I display them? What would I do with the leftovers? Working on this project has been a chance to experiment with different ideas, and it meant finally setting up an Etsy shop.
Why is collage so appealing to you?
The appeal is in the unexpected collisions. There’s a natural surrealism to collage that both artists and audiences seem to really enjoy. The juxtaposition of various familiar fragments brings new contexts and potentialities to light. I love the endless possibilities and the nonexistent boundaries. I love the irreverence, and the beauty. My works are like puzzles, in a way, combining overt, easily identifiable markers from art, literature, advertising, pop culture etc. with more personal or obscured symbolism. The works will continue to unravel or unfold with “finds” for viewers to match. But they can never fully be deciphered- most of the layers become hidden under paint or other images. The point is not to get to some kind of concrete meaning, but to propel the “what ifs” of the imagination.
What inspires your work? What are you influenced by?
I love to use text as texture and words as images, but I also pull themes and lines from literature and lyrics. I use music to drive the rhythm or patterns of a piece. I’m fascinated by everything from machines to found photography to religion, and of course, by the wide range of art history. It is the human imagination and ideas that interest me the most, and I mix them up. In this sense, my collage isn’t limited to cut out images- I have already added paint, chalk, ink, pastels, markers, anything I can make marks and textures with- but it is also about the collage of concepts and ideas. I’m most inspired by the human experience, which is manifest through our inventions and expressions of creativity. And the human experience has often been dark and dangerous, often been heroic and exalted, and most often of all, has been totally absurd. I’m inspired by all of these states.
Visit Lorette C. Luzajic at www.ideafountain.ca
Poisson D’Avril
DAVID IRVINE
David Irvine will be presenting all new “Redirected” artwork at the Flying Pony café gallery http://flyingpony.ca/ for the month of April 2015. Join David on April 4th 2015 for opening night from 5pm-9pm and chat with him personally.
Opening night takes place in a “redirected” independent coffee shop gallery that will be “redirected” into a well-known coffee franchise in keeping with the April Fools art theme. As well as free coffee and donut holes, opening night will feature a rare performance by magician, Trevor the Amazing. Ask yourself, “How many art openings have I been to that feature a magician in a fake coffee franchise? Poisson D’Avril exhibition will be on display for all of April. Environmentally friendly art.
David Irvine has been refining and pushing the boundaries of “redirected” art with a unique and original spin almost as long as his good friend, Marcel Duchamp. David’s quirky and very popular style is created by repurposing prints or original art that has been redirected from thrift stores or found at yard sales and painted upon using his own style of creativity. Seemingly random subject matter often skewers sacred cows including pop cultural references, political comment, the camp and the absurd, often combining all these elements to create truly original art pieces.
Over the years David’s work has gone viral multiple times thanks to social media websites and a personal endorsement from George Takei. A direct result of this coverage has been a rise of collectors from Australia, Europe, Japan and the United States.
Prints and other merchandise of Irvine’s work is available for purchase on Redbubble http://www.redbubble.com/people/gnarledbranch and originals can be viewed on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/ca/people/TheGnarledBranch as well as his personal website www.gnarledbranch.com
Media / Print References
1. In Touch Magazine - http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/artist-from-the-gnarled-branch-recreates-thrift-store-paintings-by-adding-movie-characters-check-it-out-41222
2. Swallow Daily - http://swallowdaily.com/2014/08/small-town-artist-goes-viral/
3. Bored Panda - http://www.boredpanda.com/re-directed-paintings-david-irvine-gnarled-branch/
4. Twisted Sifter - http://twistedsifter.com/2014/07/thrift-store-painting-remixes-by-david-irvine/
5. HLN TV - http://www.hlntv.com/slideshow/2014/07/30/thrift-store-paintings-david-irvine-gnarled-branch
6. George Takei - http://instagram.com/p/rSy-Y-uTRS/
7. Yahoo News- https://screen.yahoo.com/artist-remixes-thrift-store-paintings-215032987.html?soc_src=default
8. The Observer (UK) - newspaper interview
9. Guardian UK - newspaper review
Media Appearances
CP24- in studio interview
Innerspace via The Space Channel - program segment
CHCH TV - in studio interview
