Painting Hamilton at the Art Gallery of Hamilton

With a high profile Cezanne show also on at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Painting Hamilton could have easily been sidelined. Instead, the ten local painters dominate a larger share of space and shine brightly, in part because of the refreshingly understated presentation of the Frenchman’s The World is An Apple, which is generously spaced and uninterrupted by excessive didactics.



Christina Sealey, Anna

Painting Hamilton encourages slow, unmediated viewing, particularly for David Hucal’s aloof abstractions whose rich mark making defies discernment. Daniel Hutchinson demands similar scrutiny, but delights instead in washing his black canvases with altered fluorescent tubes. This painterly concern with light suffuses Matthew Schofield’s vast array of oils imitating the scale and accidents of 20th Century amateur snapshots: the rusty corona of a misplaced thumb, red-eyed pets, the stark eroticism of a camera flash on white flesh.

The show’s gems come in all sizes: Catherine Gibbons’ epic friezes of flame-filled industrial smoke induce a visceral chill and anchor the unexpected qualities in Christina Sealey’s newest paintings at either side. The rare glimpse of a study for Untitled (Hollie) is shockingly monumental, and made subtler in a final version that showcases Sealey’s deft eye for detail while perching its figure at an eerie black precipice, illuminated by a cold light that, unlike Hutchinson’s fluorescent tubes, is without a clear origin.

While both artists and works could yield easy associations, curator Melissa Bennett wisely resists reductive comparisons in favour of an installation that lets each be seen for their own merits. She trusts the viewer to recognize how abstractions like Beth Stuart’s Doppelbanger paintings relate to the touch of Lorne Toews’ brush. While classically figurative, Toews embraces moments where paint supersedes realism; where flawlessly executed form yields to raw light and reveals the slippages that keep the medium so compellingly eternal.


Art Gallery of Hamilton: http://www.artgalleryofhamilton.com/
Painting Hamilton continues to February 8.


Stephanie Vegh is a Hamilton-based visual artist and writer whose criticism has appeared in Scotland's Map Magazine, Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Hamilton Arts & Letters, in addition to her own blog. Her drawings and installations have shown most recently at the upArt Contemporary Art Fair and Nathaniel Hughson Gallery in Hamilton. She is the Executive Director of the Hamilton Arts Council and a member of the Curatorial Committee for Hamilton's annual Supercrawl. She is also Akimblog's Hamilton correspondent and can be followed @Stephanie_Vegh on Twitter.