Jenn Mann's Adventures of the Nouveau Naturalist

Oh Dear (or should I say deer?). Jenn Mann, in her oil painting from the series "subconscious vista" (2010-11), has managed to mash all the au courant eye candy into one medium-sized canvas. Crystals, Geese, some William Morris-esque florals, and of course the models who were painted as if they were standing for hours on end, struggling through their ennui until the moment when they could ride their three-speed bicycle off into the smog-diffused sunset. This is a depiction of one hell of a cooly choreographed subconscious. It looks like an editorial for Canadian Vogue! Wait, we don't have Vogue here?

but it sure is pretty, isn't it?

Shawn Skeir: Discipline meets Expression

A hop, skip and a jump from my own neighbourhood, I made it down to Shawn Skeirs' gallery opening a few Thursdays ago. He has his own gallery nestled in between a fast-dwindling cluster of antique shops near the end of Queen West. I have a mostly neutral attitude towards contemporary abstract paintings, as the meaning rarely goes beyond the context of interior design, and I was therefor not arriving with high expectations (or any for that matter). I have to say, standing in the room splashed with his dozen or so wood paneled acrylics was a huge turn on.

There was something so "Queen West" about the neons mixed with the Crayola colours, on canvases (or in his case wood panels) that are politely "big" but not audaciously so. I feel this form of abstract painting is not a "whoopsie" approach to layering paint in a way-too self-indulgent catharsis, but a necessary revolt against Toronto's grey-osity. I respect artists who are disciplined in exploring their materials, and not just prone to accidental paint slopping, so props to Skeir for that.

Skeir considers himself a "sculptor in two dimensions", he told me. His paintings, especially those from his "DNA" series, really reminded me of Karin Davie's work and her incredible insinuation of depth in two dimensional space. The energy of his paintings is infectious, and what impressed me the most was the thoughtful structure that underlayed these colour bombs. Sure there wasn't a mystery so much of how he created the layers, probably done simply with masking tape, but there were spaces of paint that were complex enough to warrant real awe and, even more important, a desire in me to revisit the imagery continuously throughout the evening.
Skeir's paintings are a frenzy of colour and energy that is tempered by experience and a conscientiousness towards the materials. Or, as my friend put it, she would love to wear the paintings as a dress, the ultimate complement from the uber style conscious Torontonian ilk perhaps?