quote:Originally posted by Seaquam:quote:Originally posted by Rob_Sutherland:
I love Colville's work. If you are a fan, Christopher Pratt from Newfoundland is much in the same vein. His wife Mary is a fantastic artist herself (and probably the more famous) but Christopher's work really speaks to me.
Amazing man as well. I had lunch with him a number of years ago at his studio in St. Mary's where he showed me a number of paintings he wasn't happy with, some of which were really wonderful. He was burning them one by one as we ate. It was heart wrenching.
We were just talking about Mary Pratt a couple of days ago! Some of her works are currently displayed in the National Gallery in Ottawa-- jam jars that are remarkably realistic, like a very sharp photograph. We were pretty impressed, and went back to see them a second time before we left the gallery.
Was this the show that's been traveling the country for the past 2 years? If so, it was remarkable! We saw it at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg. Another major retrospective like the Colville show.
It was interesting to watch the films where she demonstrated her methodology - she takes photographs and projects them onto the canvas as her guideline - and directly addressed her detractors who have said she's more of a copyist than an artist.
Really it's not much different than artists who draw a grid on the canvas as well as on their original source material... Or those who painstakingly measure the location of key points in the source material so that they can replicate the proportions on the canvas.
I've tried all three methods my own paintings, and I've painted without any guidance. It really depends on what I'm trying to achieve.
Ultimately, what Mary Pratt achieves when she applies the paint to the canvas isn't something that just anyone with a projector can achieve. It takes real skill and talent. Her ability to capture refracted and reflected light is phenomenal.