Something Cloudy, Something Clear

Paul P.

John Singer Sargent produced his last body of work in the Rocky Mountains.  Toronto-based artist Paul P. has drawn inspiration from Singer Sargent’s rendering of a spiritually transcendent back country isolated as it was from the demands of 19th-century western civilization. Paul P.’s new work marks a departure from his romantic male figures and cultured landscapes of the last decade signaling a noticeable shift in his practice to include abstract images, sculptural elements and a revaluation of traditional printmaking techniques.  The intimately scaled work in this exhibition is a departure from his well-known oeuvre in painting and drawing, focused as it has been on portraits of romantic male figures, and the placement of the male figure in distant, tranquil landscapes.  Rather, Paul P. focuses on the inter-relationships of print media and sculptural installation to extend his practice of drawing.  In the process of experimentation Paul P.’s subject matter has also changed.  The lanquid figures set in sublime landscapes have disappeared, as if overpowered by the enormity of mountain landscapes that the artist has most recently abstracted in various print media.   

The twenty-one intimately scaled prints and four sculptures in the IKG exhibition were realized in part while Paul P. was in residence in the Print Media department of ACAD (as well as short term residencies in Banff,  Spain, Venice, Italy [coloured stucco walls and laundry left to dry outdoors] and Venice Beach, California [palm trees, ‘purple pavilion’]).  Prior to taking up residency at ACAD Paul P conducted plein air studies (with prepared etching plates) along numerous trails beneath dramatic mountainous landscapes.  He gradually reduced the visual impressions to spare, abstract forms, extending the profile line of mountains to a series of sculptures in ash wood.   As a result, each loosely defined print image and sculptural form hints at the iconic mountain peaks and endless, sweeping slopes.  The monotype image becomes more visionary and elusive in washes of blue, mauve or grey-green.  The pale, hazy tinted lines of the geometric sculptures speak eloquently of the fantasy of the high mountains that many Albertans take for granted.  In both prints and sculpture the mountain peaks and slopes in some imagined profile celebrate a sense of personal remove and human distance aligned with uncertainty and a strange alteration of scale in the enormous IKG space.  Ultimately one senses a state of isolation and removal made all the more remarkable and poignant by simple means --- the  engagement of the eye in traditional printmaking techniques and the curious but familiar form of miniature chairs as sculpture.   

Special thanks to Amy Gaulin, Printer; Gary Olson, Head of the Print Media Program, ACAD; Bret Reinbold, Technician of Print Media, ACAD; Ann Thrale for fabrication, Head Technician, IKG, ACAD; Joe Kelley, Photographer, ACAD; Lewis Liski, Videographer; as well as Jesse McKee and Shauna Thompson at The Banff Centre.