Mary Joyce

Painting the People Changing the Circumstances
 
Bugera Matheson Gallery
Edmonton, AB, T5N 1R1 Canada
February 26 - March 12, 2022

Artist in attendance Saturday February 26, 1-3 pm

Artist Statement

"These works are related to the rising tide of resistance in the world. They celebrate courageous collectives of people from many places united by their need for a social system under their own control, where they decide. Resistance is not stopping, neither is what makes it necessary; we are all part of a system in an ongoing state of change, development and motion. We all are part of it in an ensemble of human relations.

I choose to highlight forces for the new in Edmonton and worldwide, noticing the joy that explodes within a march of co-workers, the astonishing performative characteristics of environmental protestors, brilliant choreographies of colours amongst the Indian Farmers
Camps, the peoples’ creativity unleashed in striving for their own empowerment to prevail. That is the content of my recent work.

As to the form, I have for a long time now felt the comfort of a square format, a ‘cadmium-red-light’ underpainting, urban contexts, and the occasional reference to an ordinary safety pin. These honour the Quebec student upsurge of 2012 that unseated a government. Students wore a square of red felt pinned to their lapel as they agitated in the city streets for their right to education. At that time I adjusted my method of applying paint to allow for the kind of physical manipulations my hands love from my history as a printmaker. Using stencils, brayers, tools like combs made from plastic detritus, old
credit cards, plastering tools, pizza pans, scribers, scrapers, wax and mulberry paper transfers, photo-collages produces a wide variety of marks, textures, tonal and perspectival gradations. This enriches the work."

Mary Joyce
Jan. 24, 2022