Manitoba Arts Network 2023 Touring Exhibitions
October 3 to November 3, 2022
Art Gallery is open Monday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Manitoba Wildlife Imaginary | Brian Longfield (Manitoba)
medium: painting
number of works: 20
For some time I have been interested in the factors that grant subjecthood, personality, and character to our perception of others. In earlier work, this interest lead to work using masks to create performance-based work with my partner, Charla Ramsey in which performance of characters using theatrical masks was used as the basis for work that became drawings, paintings, videos, and installations. More recently I have been making paintings of animals to explore their subjecthood.
This exhibition encourages seeing animals as beings with thoughts and feelings but it is interesting to note that the personalities and emotions we ascribe to animals are not likely to be their actual feelings but are based on our human perceptions of human emotions. While many animals do indeed have emotions and feelings that can be observed and recorded by behavioural scientists and certainly people who live with pets develop a sense of their pets’ emotional life, this exhibit is not and cannot function as a substitute for that. It does however act as a small stepping stone towards it.
Artist Biography
Over the years, Brian Longfield has exhibited video art, installations, and paintings, as well as exploring performance and theater, and avante garde music. His acrylic paintings are made with original photos and a data projector. His current work incorporates an interest in biodiversity, ecology, science and empathy. Brian has recently returned to painting after focusing on video based work with the now-defunct collective, Viewing Method Group, and performance based work as part of the duo “6.” Through his various projects, Brian has exhibited at The New Music Festival, Nuit Blanche, Video Pool, Graffiti Art Programming, Frame Arts Warehouse, and as part of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.
Brian holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the University of Western Ontario. He has curated exhibitions, both at Frame Arts Warehouse and at his own former Gallery, Tumble Contemporary Art. He lives in Winnipeg with his partner Charla and their children, Aria and Zephyr.
Mind and Heart is a series of black ink drawings and alcohol ink paintings exploring the connection between neuroscience and the human heart. Victoria’s work is inspired by the drawings and cell-stained illuminations of neuroscientists Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Camillo Golgi. Golgi created a staining technique making brain cells (neurons) visible under the microscope. Deeply inspired by their illuminations, Victoria began drawing neurons using black ink pens on distressed yellow paper mimicking the cell-stained images of Cajal and Golgi. Victoria’s research of the brain and the formation of neurons and specifically memories caused her to question can one overcome and/or change their negative memories. She became intrigued by the connection between the mind (memories and thoughts) and the heart (emotion). This research of the heart-brain connection led her to the work of Dr. Armour who coined the term ”heart brain”. In 1991, Dr. Armour discovered that the heart has its own ”little brain” composed of approximately 40,000 neurons that are alike neurons in the brain. Thus, Victorias research led her to explore the anatomical heart through drawing and photography.
Artist Biography
Victoria Prince is a multi-disciplined artist who graduated in 2003 from the University of Manitoba receiving a B.F.A. First Class Honours degree. Her work is broad in style and genre from traditional black ink drawings, alcohol ink paintings, and experimental films.
She has won various awards such as the Winnipeg Arts Council’s “On the Rise”, and Best Picture for the Urban Reels Festival in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Victoria’s work has been shown in film festivals nationally and internationally such as in Egypt, the UK, South Africa, France, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.
Nets are patterns that catch and hold. The patterns of our lives also ensnare us. Often, those patterns are beneficial routines, but there are many patterns that hold us back. This series of work is a consideration of patterns generally as well as the work it takes to construct and deconstruct those patterns.
The net drawings are laid out in even grids. Periodically the ordered repetition of the grid is disrupted by extra pieces of string, holes that have been irregularly patched, and places where the nets lose their pattern. There is a tension between the orderliness of the grid pattern and the slight variations that encourage the viewer to come in close to examine each knot and to seek out new patterns in the areas where the regular grid is broken.
The animations and drawings of the hands reference the mundane, day-to-day work that goes into mending and maintaining a routine. Work that is overlooked yet constant and unceasing. Without this vigilance, there are so many ways in which the ordered world can become disordered.
In conflict with this, is the acknowledgment that systems and patterns can also be harmful and require reordering. Sometimes the disruption of a pattern is necessary. And so, while some of the drawn and animated hands work to build and maintain the grid pattern of the nets the other hands take that pattern apart to create spaces that resist the dominant pattern to allow for variation and change.
This project was created with support from the Manitoba Arts Council.
Artist Biography
Alison Davis is an artist and animator based in Treaty One Territory, Winnipeg. She has created a number of short films with a focus on traditional animation animation that have screened at festivals and venues around the world. Her drawing practice explores the subtlety of fine lines and delicate interactions. Davis holds a BFA in Film Animation from Concordia University in Montreal and has been the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.
One golden autumn day, I looked skyward to the honking of south-bound Canada Geese. Reminded of practicing scales on the piano with each bird a note, I envisioned a musical staff superimposed, or “tagged”, over the iconic flying V formation. Suddenly, musical notes and sounds seemed to be hiding everywhere.
I began to photograph such commonplace images as a scattering of leaves, footprints in the snow, and shadows of objects as Earth made its way around the sun. A notion to stencil symbols over the photos evolved into this suite of ten mixed media prints. In assembling the work, I mimic the action of a Graffiti artist by stencilling my “tags” (musical staffs, clefs, sound effects) onto a barrier of acrylic panels through which the photographs are visible. Their titles painted on the bottom borders reflect my fondness for puns. The works are displayed flat against the wall, although Bridge, Bar, and Refrain are fun to present on the floor with a few dried leaves and pebbles on their surfaces, playfully adding to the score. In this celebration of imagined music, I am inviting viewers to “play tag” for themselves and discover what may be hidden in the gutter, the shadows, or the stars.
Artist Biography
Karen Schulz is a visual artist and art event coordinator who is inspired by her birthplace, the farming community of Grandview, Manitoba, and the Winnipeg urban life where she lives and works. From her studio, maintained for several years in the Exchange District, her practice overlaps traditional and contemporary media with an emphasis recently on experimental drawings.
medium: painting
number of works: 14
Classic Portraits allow me to present a classic figure in two distinct ways. The image is from the side and from straight on. Combining the side and the front perspective creates movement. The fusion of creating a classic portrait and the movement at the same time is what creates an interesting “Double Vision” of each figure. The clothing worn by the figures contributes to the classic look, dating them to times past. These portraits at the same time as being classic can become deformed with the two faces. In some, there is still, simple beauty, yet in others, they become grotesque, serious, or funny. Each and every one of them are people I have created from my imagination.
Artist Biography
Pepe Hidalgo’s style is narrative in the figurative and abstract genre. His figurative is not related to realism, it is created from his imagination, and his memory of his sense of reality.
Hidalgo’s paintings achieve strength through the glazes or velatures he applies. He will apply them until he achieves a greater sensation of space. Hidalgo displaced oil by acrylic in the nineties. He paints direct sketches on the canvas. There is a distinctive element present in his paintings, a two-coloured cord or string that acts as a reference guide between reality and imagination, which, by remaining in time, has become a hallmark of identity.
His artistic process began in adolescence during frequent visits to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where he discovered his first teacher, Francisco de Goya. His work is influenced by Velázquez, Zurbarán, El Bosco, movements of the 20th century, Picasso and American artists Francis Bacon, Freud, Esteban Vicente, and Pollock.
Art has allowed him to “free himself” and express himself without prejudice, and to dare to do what he feels without expectations. Many people ask him where he gets his ideas for his paintings. When you know him you realize he mixes his knowledge of astrology, mythology, history, life, and experiences. The ideas for his paintings arise from everyday life, and the search to understand the relationship of past or present events with the human being, in relation to who and what we are. This is reflected, manifested, and expressed in his paintings.
