Half a dozen of us wound up working hard, painting plates, platters and a vase in my studio on Labour Day.
This time the ‘raid’ consisted of Eric Metcalfe, Katie Lyle, Jacqui Ross, Paul Mathieu and new-to-us Dave MacWilliam. Alan took lots of photos of the painters but I’ll just post one of each person tonight.
As usual, the visitors brought lunch – quiche, salads, bread, dips, chips and cold cuts. Alan and I do appreciate that!
In return I make up the ‘blanks’ and afterwards bisque, glaze and fire them again. It usually works out that I can deliver them to Vancouver because I’m also delivering pots to Granville Island or the airport.
We’re going to miss Katie’s enthusiasm and her painstaking care in painting with underglazes. She is moving back to Toronto, her home province, to further her painting and academic career. So good luck Katie. Invite us to your shows!
For the newcomer to our raids, Dave MacWilliam, I’ll include this bio of his career so far.
David MacWilliam has been active in the Vancouver art community for over three decades as an artist and educator. Since 1988, he has been teaching visual arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. He was Dean of the Faculty of Visual Art and Material Practice from 2004-2013 and he is currently an Associate Professor in the Audain School of Visual Arts.
Consistent in his art practice is an interest in colour, form and beauty. He moves fluidly between the disciplines of painting, photography and sculpture. His finished works are the result of a highly refined process of reflection: the relationships between forms and colour, and how the speed of a curve can define the gestalt of a shape. He continues to develop a specific iconography of material abstraction and remains primarily concerned with the social role of art, and aspects of beauty and aesthetics that are determining qualities of life.
His current research focuses on bilateral symmetry and psychological tests that use art as subject matter. His book Unfolding (2012) reproduces forty inkblots chosen from many that he has made over the past fifteen years.
His work has been exhibited extensively in Canada and occasionally in Europe over the past 30 years. Some of these exhibitions include the Paris Biennale (1982), Vancouver Art Gallery’s Art and Artists 1939-83 (1983), and most recently in the VAG’s PAINT exhibition (2006/07). He had one person exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1984), and the Vancouver Art Gallery (1990) and the Galleria Panorama, Barcelona (1997), the Musee Regional de Rimouski in Quebec (1998) and Winchester Galleries, Victoria (2013).
Paul often asks me to make him a big platter so this time I made the biggest one for which I have a mould (I threw, altered and bisque-fired these oval moulds many years ago). He spent the day carefully painting little dots to form his design. The photos to follow will show just how much work he did that day! Then I had the worry of making sure it was fired properly afterward. All’s well.
