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EDWARD
EPP: STILL LIFE
July 3 - August 3
ARTIST TALK
Saturday July 12, 1:00 pm
RSVP >>
click
here to view exhibition >>
Like many ambitious artists of his generation, Edward Epp
use to think that depicting flowers was something that serious
contemporary painters simply didn't do. Flowers of any kind
were considered to be too pretty to qualify as suitable material
for expressive modern art, so Epp decided early in his career
to concentrate on landscapes and abstraction instead.
Things recently began to change, however, when an especially
severe winter last year forced the 57-year-old Prince Rupert
artist, who only paints directly in front of the motif, to
stay indoors for several weeks. Studio-bound and unable to
paint the northern BC landscape that has been his principal
subject for the past 15 years, Epp found himself giving floral
still life painting a serious try. The results surprised
him. Far from being an obstacle to the creation of powerful
gestural painting, he discovered that his subjects' inherent
beauty made them an ideal vehicle for the expression of an
energetic and passionate painterly vision.
A summer exhibition of this new work is currently showing
at the Marion Scott Gallery until August 3. Consisting of
26 oil paintings, watercolours and sculpted collages, Edward
Epp: Still Life is the artist's fourth solo show with MSG
and the first to focus on floral work.
Some of the oils in the exhibition focus almost entirely
on their floral subjects, whose colour-saturated forms are
presented against dark or semi-dark neutral grounds of thickly
applied paint. Others fall into the categor of table top
still lifes, wherein random objects such as African masks
and milk bottles are gathered together with flowers in their
curving vases on a tilted surface. The latter are notable
for their sculpted volumes and a highly expressive formal
tension.
The exhibition also includes a number of watercolours that
are more delicate in approach. Produced the winter before
under similar circumstances, they record their subjects'
fragile beauty with an exquisitve sensibility and almost
Zen-like contemplativeness.
click
here to view exhibition >>
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