April’s Feature Artist: Jill Price’s “Global Landscapes: Oil”
Museum London Art Rental Gallery
421 Ridout Street North London, ON Canada N6A 5H4 | 519.661.0333
April 7th – May 8th
Always politically charged, Price’s work plays with materiality to communicate how nature and its’ power are being mapped and engineered by humankind, leaving no land untouched and in a constant battle for survival amidst the “carbon footprint” our industrious and consumerist culture leaves
behind.
“Global Landscape: Oil Series” is a series of mixed media landscape paintings that began to evolve in 2006. The gestural works attempt to visualize how oil consumes our lives politically, economically and environmentally. These paintings arose in a time when many believed that the U.S. went into the Middle East due to their monopoly on black gold and not as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This body of work continues to grow in response to the BP oil spill, Libya’s current reduction in their production of oil and Japan’s reduced demand for oil due their most recent natural disaster.
The landscapes themselves are generic references to different landforms and foliage to imply that the effects an oil spill, oil crisis, or a war resulting from either is not local or site specific, but rather effects us all, whether it be water contamination, the cost of living, or more tragically the casualties of family and friends, etc. Depending on the viewer’s position, the imagery can read as a formal landscape or shift into an aerial perspective, that lends the work to reading more like a map.
By balancing the vibrant colours of the landscapes against the darker areas of oil paint which seeps, pools, and spots areas of the canvas, I try to communicate the ongoing struggle to conserve oil and simultaneously protect the landscapes it lies beneath in a culture so dependent on its existence. Depending on the audience’s perspective or moment in time, the paintings may appear dark due to oil’s depleting and contaminating state, or hopeful, reflective of oil’s life giving and industrious qualities.
To view more of Price’s work visit her website www.jillpricestudios.ca or stop by gallery until May 8th, 2011. Jill Price also has a studio open to the public in Barrie, Ontario, which you can visit Tuesdays thru Fridays, noon – 5 pm. To see a more detailed artist’s bio and statement look below. Feel free to pass this invite along to friends, family and colleagues.
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