Opening at the Fringe Gallery
Portraits of Simone
Simone in Black, and Other “Women of Great Personal Charm and Beauty”
The Fringe Gallery Edmonton October 2005
In spring 1989 the following ad appeared in The Globe and Mail:
Canada’s leading national newspaper desperately needs responsible visual arts critic, not interested in “mastery” and not threatened by “the other”, to provide informed responses to contemporary work by women artists.
Search committee: The League of Women of Great Personal Charm and Beauty, Exemplary Canadian Patriots, Feminists, Defenders of the Earth, Survivors of Many Neglects and Troubles.
Apply: Box 5663, The Globe and Mail
(Lind, Jane, Joyce Wieland Artist on Fire, James Lorimer and Company, 2001, p 297-299)
“Woman of Great Personal Charm and Beauty, etc.” are the words John Bentley Mays used to dismiss Joyce Wieland’s contribution to the history of visual arts in Canada. He used this phrase in reviewing her retrospective exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in April, 1989. Her enraged colleagues threw a picnic on the grounds of the AGO under this banner, and advertized in the Globe and Mail to have JBM replaced.
I use the phrase to signal my interest in how much actual change in the social position of women has occurred since the picnic. It is a question I discuss with my models. Since they choose their own poses and accessories, a strong collaborative element develops in each sitting, providing energy, humour, vigour, timeliness and verbal observations on vital issues for contemporary women.
The paintings are made spontaneously, with pencil and oil paint on birch panels or heavy gessoed archival paper, from life, without preliminary studies or photographic reference. The sitters often observe that their portraits depict not the outer appearance as much as a layer or two inwards, their psychological condition. Text is incorporated into the grounds to document conversations and telling comments that emerge during the sitting between model and painter.
Mary Joyce
The Fringe Gallery Edmonton October 2005
In spring 1989 the following ad appeared in The Globe and Mail:
Canada’s leading national newspaper desperately needs responsible visual arts critic, not interested in “mastery” and not threatened by “the other”, to provide informed responses to contemporary work by women artists.
Search committee: The League of Women of Great Personal Charm and Beauty, Exemplary Canadian Patriots, Feminists, Defenders of the Earth, Survivors of Many Neglects and Troubles.
Apply: Box 5663, The Globe and Mail
(Lind, Jane, Joyce Wieland Artist on Fire, James Lorimer and Company, 2001, p 297-299)
“Woman of Great Personal Charm and Beauty, etc.” are the words John Bentley Mays used to dismiss Joyce Wieland’s contribution to the history of visual arts in Canada. He used this phrase in reviewing her retrospective exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in April, 1989. Her enraged colleagues threw a picnic on the grounds of the AGO under this banner, and advertized in the Globe and Mail to have JBM replaced.
I use the phrase to signal my interest in how much actual change in the social position of women has occurred since the picnic. It is a question I discuss with my models. Since they choose their own poses and accessories, a strong collaborative element develops in each sitting, providing energy, humour, vigour, timeliness and verbal observations on vital issues for contemporary women.
The paintings are made spontaneously, with pencil and oil paint on birch panels or heavy gessoed archival paper, from life, without preliminary studies or photographic reference. The sitters often observe that their portraits depict not the outer appearance as much as a layer or two inwards, their psychological condition. Text is incorporated into the grounds to document conversations and telling comments that emerge during the sitting between model and painter.
Mary Joyce