“Colour and expressive line feature in my work. I generally work in series, developing a concept visually until the idea no longer compels me. In the making, I create a tension between open experimental mark-making and a refined deliberate responses to what was laid down, gradually becoming more responsive to the surface of the painting. Much of my work is in one way or another inspired by prolonged observation of the natural world –colours and colour relationships, patterns and compositional structure, and textures and forms, and in this case, the shoreline of lakes and rivers while paddling along.”
Feature Artist: Pearl Van Geest
artwork title: 'Speed River Reflections'
medium: oil & cold wax on panel
size: 36" x 48"
price: $2,600
is a Guelph artist, art writer and visual arts educator who has been working in these fields since graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1996. She also holds a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Fine Art. She has exhibited her work widely across Canada, and has work in collections in the United States and Europe. Her work has been supported through Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council grants and is part of the national Art Bank collection.
She works across a range of media and materials, with a focus on colour and composition - primarily inspired by an immersion in the natural world and a knowledge and love of painting and other art forms.
Recognition includes being the recipient of the 2015 Canadian Art Foundation’s Art Writing Prize, being the inaugural Artist in the Community for the City of Guelph in 2014, arts writer in residence at Est-Nord-Est, Quebec in 2016; BAIR (artist in residence) at the Banff Center 2010 and 2014; as well as being the Artist in Residence for The Children’s Museum in 2004/05. She was also shortlisted for the RBC painting prize in 2013.
Recent exhibitions/events include Flow curated by Virginia M. Eichhorn, March 2019 at The Museum, Kitchener Waterloo: Unbound: Between Protest and Parade for Nuit Rose, Toronto, 2018; Kiss Painting: Pride 2018, at the Toronto Pride’s street fair and a solo painting show, Caught in the Act at Coldstream Fine Art in Toronto, February 2019.
website: https://www.pearlvangeest.com/
instagram: @pearlvangeestart
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