Finally, oi!

I've been remiss on my updating lately. So much going on. However, I have a couple of photos of new work, and more is of course in the works.

I've been thinking hard about my practice now that my situation is changing with the upcoming addition to my life. Where my life was happy, busy, and full, it is about to become even more-so, like the Grinch's heart – expanding beyond conceivable capacity. Does this mean less time in the studio? Probably, out of necessity. At least for the first 6 months I should think. But then again, a bassinet or playpen in the studio is always an option... Whatever the case turns out to be, I am at peace with a probable slow-down in my production, but it will not cease. I have painter friends who have had children and are as active as ever, and considering my energy, I hope to be counted among them. Meanwhile, I am working as always in the studio, and hope to continue to for the last three months of this journey!

Enough of my chatter. Work:


As yet untitled, oil on acrylic on canvas, 66" x 84"

Also to be titled, oil on canvas, 52" x 60"

Summer Works

It has been a busy summer! Time in the studio was usurped by some summer activities for a while, but feeling refreshed and reinvigorated I am now back at it full steam. Some work has just recently been completed, others well on their way. Photos will come as soon as I can shoot them with a camera other than my own. Note: digital cameras and blowing sand are a recipe for disaster.

Summertime Hiatus

It's been almost two months since my exhibition and since I've spent solid time in the studio, the longest I've been away from my practice. But there have been some pretty good reasons, aside from the post-show burn-out. In five months I and my partner will be saying hello for the first time to our new little person, my best collaborative creation EVER! Nothing I will do in life will top that one. The second trimester has me feeling more myself, less exhausted, less under-the-weather, with more energy, so I have begun ramping up my time in the studio while the going is good. I have a show in late 2010, so as much as I can work now, the better.

Slant's opening night

I was really taken aback by the response to the exhibition, and very happily so. And I was humbled by how many familiar and friendly faces came to see and say hi! The installation was on a slant in the middle of the gallery, which made for interesting interactions with the piece when there were a great number of people in the space. Happily, people milled about inside and outside the installation. Yet, I was kept in check by my harshest critic - an Akida puppy - who decided he just didn't care for the work and lifted his leg on the work to let me know how he felt. Unfortunately, the camera was not at hand for that one.

SLANT is ever so slanted!

The exhibition is fully installed. I won't post images until after opening night this Friday, however here are a few teaser images of the install. It is a painting and installation exhibition simultaneously. I do hope that it will be viewed in the spirit it was intended, though it pretty much breaks most of the norms of painting installation. I am convinced however that the paintings maintain their integrity as singular pieces outside of their current environment, so I am looking forward to feedback on both the installation and the paintings themselves.

Friday night, 7 - 10 pm, 47 Milky Way in Toronto. The Google map to the gallery is here.

Slant - curated by Marieke Treilhard

Slant is a step beyond a painting exhibition, creating an environment that dissolves the neutrality of the viewing experience. This is something I have wanted to pursue for some time, and have finally tackled in this exhibition.

Marieke Treilhard is curator, and writes:

Slant explores the possibility of the experiential beyond the picture plane. Jennifer McGregor’s paintings address themes of perception, misperception, and fracture, while exploring the geometrical deconstruction of space. Slant is an exhibition that takes the painting as its starting point and extends the installation beyond the parameters of the frame.

At once whimsical and disjunctive, the creation of an environment within an existing gallery space unsettles the viewer’s expectations of the two dimensional medium. Slant explores the possibility of spatial conversion and the manipulation of embodied optics within the context of the gallery. The installation activates space in a way that forces the viewer’s own self-awareness through a spatially fractured and compartmentalized approach to the viewing process. The displacement of referential space and the confinement of the picture plane, conflates the object and its environment into a total installation in this exhibition. The painting is activated by the circumstances of its reception.

Slant is about play and the malleability of spatial reception. Probing the possibilities and limitations of fractured planes and geometric instabilities, McGregor utilizes space as a starting point for the creation of an environment that echoes the aesthetic and experiential grounds for her work. The implicit re-organization of referential and representational space in her practice compels the viewer to consider the possibility of an affective and embodied practice of abstraction. This installation strategy extends the existence of the formal surface, disavowing the social exemption that denies the painting spatial and temporal immediacy. The social exists in the interstice, the fissure, and the striation of uncertain receptions. Slant allows the social to re-surface ambivalently in the construction of spatial instability.

Slant offers a space of productive misperception in which the two dimensional extends beyond the edge.

SLANT

The exhibition is coming up in two weeks. Curated by Marieke Treilhard, this one is going to be the most fun (and the most nerve-wracking) exhibition I've done to date. I am excited that this exhibition in particular is to be my first solo.