Shawn Serfas: In the Search of Choiceland · Derek J. J. Knight

shawn serfas: in searCh of ChoiCeland

by Derek J. J. Knight

Shawn Serfas has perfected an abstract process in his vibrant canvases that is largely experimental, processoriented and always inventive. His buildup of surface tension –puddled, rolled or spackled pigment, large controlled brush strokes, and blocks or lozenges of colour and underpainting, are characteristic of what I wish to describe as a ‘maximalist painterly sensibility.’ If we can point to the gestural paintings of the American vanguard of the post-War era, or members of the Regina Five in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, Serfas is a member today of a generation of Canadian artists that includes painters such as John Kissick, Sandra Meigs and Matt Crookshank who have embraced a tactility and experimental posture in their fearless and deft orchestration of their materials. Serfas, is unique and resolute about his trajectory, which has examined most imaginable genres of gestural abstraction, with the exception of the geometries of hard edge or conceptual painting, trends that were the subject of an exhibition curated in 2017-18 by the Vancouver Art Gallery.1

Rather, with Serfas there is always the drama of a robust action in which the paint flows freely, puddles or races to the point of least resistance as the canvas is lifted and manipulated to help establish a fluid colour field that is the basis on which he can then rework the surface with brushes, rollers, trowels, brooms or rakes. In preferring the more performative, chance-oriented actions of gestures, his protracted execution over the period of weeks allows for the accretion and build-up of paint, which can then be sanded down or polished to render a fixed or layered surface. Serfas produces canvases that are physically commanding in their life-size scale but they also harbour important themes that allude to the painter’s belief system, most notably the experience and emotional hold the physical environment exerts on him. There is a longstanding relationship with the Western Canadian and Prairie landscapes, which translates into dramatic, forceful and sometimes ethereal evocations of weathered, horizonless fugues, kaleidoscopic geographies or even lamentations of deeply seeded memories of places and people. These are the leitmotifs of This Kind of Wilderness, a title that asks us to consider how these nine paintings and a single sculpture register beyond their often intense form-making and convey something of the introspective, indeed palpable and illusive world of metaphor.

Within the context of This Kind of Wilderness where two thirds of the nine canvases show bold calligraphic strokes, tiled markings made with a broad brush around a centrist often ephemeral image, Choiceland (2021) and Rudy (2021) are more telling in their titles. In Choiceland the yellow-wheat coloured surface is tinged with the loam of the earth in its browns, ochres and oranges. The underpainting is revealed more intensely on the four edges of the canvas, which reinforces the floating apparition of a field of wheat or canola perhaps rippled by the wind. Choiceland is a small town in Saskatchewan, which is cradled between the Torch and North Saskatchewan Rivers and the northern boreal forest.2 In essence it is the artist’s paean to a part of the prairie that has been farmed and has sustained a way of life for settler society since the mid19th century.3

If Choiceland captures the spirit or essence of the prairie, Rudy (2021) commemorates the artist’s German grandfather who emigrated to Canada settling first in Prince George, B.C., then in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1968. He was a nickel miner in Sudbury, Ontario in the 1950s and, in Prince George, a tree feller and heavy logging equipment operator. Serfas remembers fondly a self-reliant man who built his own mining machinery and who proved resilient in the wilderness.4 The golden hued, pink tinged fields appear to rise on the horizon line in the shape of a mythical bear and beckon to the sublime galaxy above, where, like a tintype photograph made two generations ago, one can imagine the vapours of woodsmoke melding with the sounds of the smithy, the crows overhead or the bridle path. The cast acrylic forms Serfas calls “conglomerates” populating the upper right and lower left registers lend a physical element that may be perceived beyond any decorative role as cosmic bodies in their biomorphically determined shapes. Although they are easily absorbed by the painting’s scope it is conceivable they have a subconscious function as amenable objects in which pleasure or empathy play a role. Serfas has developed these cast or molded synthetic resin forms independently over the last five years as larger sculptural works in their own right, but here he explores how in miniature form they might be integrated into his paintings. As ‘conglomerates’ they give rise to a concentrated dimensionality and viscosity that are germane only to the unique physical properties of epoxy resin when it is transformed from a liquid to a solid state. Thus, the addition of these cast-formed acrylic molds at strategic points on the canvas is less a synthesis of the painted and sculptural object, than an experiment in what the suspended state produces: coloured, bejewelled, or amorphous shapes that are organic, fluid and sedimentary in quality.

The inclusion of Abrade (2020), a 28 x 9 x 9 inch molded synthetic resin sculpture which lies horizontally on a glass covered plinth, provides opportunity for Serfas to reinforce the idea of how core sampling or extraction processes have been the mother lode of prospecting and our industrial procurement of natural resources and dependence on fossil fuels. The title implies an abrasive process that extends to mining and the clearing of the land at a scale only imagined by industrial society. It is a talisman to our arch, mechanistic ambitions –extruded colours that remind us of all that technology has wrought, both sublime and terrible. While it is tempting to describe this richly veined object as inert, it fossilizes so many allusions that for me, it achieves the status of a cultural artifact, while reminding us of the rising tide of ‘hyperobjects’ and materials such as plastic, industrial by-products and waste.

With its bold semi-circular motifs, Chariot (2020) is appropriately named to suggest the movement caught on camera of the famous chuck-wagon races run every year in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. It is exquisite in its control, in fact almost prescient in the repeating motif of the semi-circular arc, which connotes both classical precision and implied movement. Thematically, from David Smith to Robert Morris artists have explored the wheel, be it the wheel for the wheel’s sake or the underlining reference to classical Greek versions of the charioteer, or the centrist images of Arthur McKay, a member of the Regina Five. For Serfas, the several semi-circular gestures give his horizontal tiled underpainting a momentum that effectively dramatizes what otherwise one may be tempted to read as an aerial image of chalk or laterite-coloured fields. Again, parts of the upper and lower register of the canvas are populated by acrylic conglomerates

that can be seen as “subdued figurative elements or intelligent masses”.5 In the most practical sense they are relics or artifacts that result from a deeper exploration or experimentation of the studio process, in which the coloured nature of the striations remind one that this is the artist’s way of reinforcing the idea of geological time as well as the metaphysical hold of memory. Such associations are kindled by the scope of Serfas’ project, which revitalizes the idea of painting as an evocation of an ephemeral world in which metaphorical or symbolic meanings are possible.

The most effusive and boldest statement in this show is his canvas The Rest of Us (2020). It is a sensorium of emotional affect produced by a vortex of solids and vapours. Part-spectacle, part-sensation, in a musical sense it is a crescendo that builds to a thunderous cataclysm. The role of synaesthesia, where sounds are suggested by visual stimuli, help transport us into this kaleidoscopic world seemingly caught in transition. Punching so much kinetic energy, it literally breathes and exhales as it performs its metamorphosis from languid modulations of colour into a crucible of organic matter at its centre. Lumpen, crustacean, or human, it is in the process of transfiguring into something else: a vessel, an apparition, an icon, or a Madonna.

This kind of foment is anticipated in Rime (2020), with its heaving liquid washes and a force that is apocalyptic in tone, which is reminiscent of the biblical parting of the waters in Genesis. Undoubtedly, it is also a reference to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) in which poet and painter alike plumb the power of the subconscious to conjure from the more dramatic allusions to nature both the fear and awe of the natural sublime The Rest of Us is a different kind of orchestration in its disposition of a fluid world that issues dramatically from the artist’s process. However, Serfas crosses genres and creates a unique hybrid form, from the surrounding lattice work of bold blue strokes that leave the edges of the canvas exposed to the central amorphous cluster of pigmented and amalgamated flows. In opening up a portal into an illusory world bending and manipulating the spatial dimension, we witness the unfolding and emergence of an inchoate spectacle, both phantasmagoric and plasmatic as only paint can evoke. The addition again of cast acrylic objects suggests something more effable, a cosmic incarnation in which the paradox between the second and third dimensions is employed to effect.

First Fires (2020) is its companion piece; rather than blue strokes, it presents a matrix of red strokes and the central motif may be read as bejeweled ingots that are forged by the artist’s imagination or the viewer’s capacity to read them as such. The reference to the harnessing of fire as our earliest technological step calls to mind when homo sapiens first thought about artmaking as a talisman to both survival and eventual cultural cognizance. Today, the associations include the more dire circumstances in which forest fires rage during the summer months, especially in the interior of British Columbia. Serfas acknowledges First Fires is inspired by Bonobo’s 2013 song of the same title. It is a rhythmic contrast of electronic and classical instrumentation which returns to the refrain of ‘first fires.’ If Serfas’ titles are key to opening up possible interpretations, process remains integral to the ambitious nature of his painting. It is fair to suggest that

naming follows the execution of the work and that the associations Serfas finds in the process of execution are both a matter of commitment to his past themes as well as those that occur concurrent to the making of the work. If he titles his works at the end of the production process, he revisits familiar themes or draws from the immediacy of his environs, including the music he listens to when painting.

Other paintings are more calligraphic in their organising principle. Shake It Out (2020) suggests an aerial image or a map of urban development, in which the architect’s plans overlay the forested or green spaces. The black and white areas suggest diagrammatic schemas in which the mechanistic designs are the dream of city or urban planners. The collaging effect also reminds one of the drawings or photographs that are meant to capture the visionary aspects of urban or suburban growth, yet here they remain abstract and open to suggestion.6 This is less about the upward concentration of steel and glass towers and more about the footprint of urban sprawl, environmentally-charged concerns that Serfas revisits from the past.7 Judges (2020) is conceived much in the same vein, although the palette shifts to red and orange hues, overlaid with lozenges of white and blue. The remnant of the semi-circular motif is there in three visible arcs, but Serfas is drawn to a different form of surface agitation. In a musical sense, it is a crescendo that builds to a thunderous cataclysm, inspired by the piercing horn tones of Colin Stetson’s “Judges” from his album New History Warfare Vol. 2. 8 Serfas creates a patchwork that builds from red and orange bold strokes to white and blue striations that are mostly horizontal in nature. This formal thicket still reads like topography, where the heavily impasto surface has the physical quality of urban density. The title Judges implies judgement, but not necessarily a pathway to salvation, although within the tenets of an environmental argument, the broader concerns about climate change come into play. The urgency to act may present a moral and ethical dilemma, but as scientific evidence mounts we are inclined to be more judgemental about those we charge with the responsibility of mediating or resolving the lasting effects of the Anthropocene.

There Will Be Time (2021) is veiled in what it implies. To witness the striations and scored treatment of the canvas surface, one may also see in these marks the tracks of a vehicle imprinted on the earth’s surface. However, the reference to time –‘there will be time’– may also be a more optimistic gesture toward the future. But, time for what, we must ask? The footprint that is implied in the convoluted network of red and white and dark semicircular motifs, may be suggestive of the forces of entropy and its capacity to exert its influence over this earthly domain and return it to natural stasis. The inverted black angle at the top of the painting suggests a sighting or calibrating device used in aerial photography or mapping technology. In conflating painterly means with reference to such a technical symbol, Serfas infers the technological sublime, of the kind that we relate to drone surveillance, infrared or aerial photography. If viewed through the lens of an infrared camera, certain patterns are revealed in the landscape. Here, the striations can be likened to tectonic plates or a limner scanning of crop rotation. Moreover, the reference to time may be capricious, strategized to alert us to the very fact that time is, in fact (sui generis), also a matter of urgency.9

Much about these paintings reveals an autobiographical point of view, which suggests a long and enduring relationship, an abiding affection for place and concept of the land, but also the memory of Serfas’ formative impressions from having grown up in Saskatchewan. These paintings arguably are intensified by his ten-year residency in Niagara in which he has used his paintings as a way to foster his memories of wide-open, sometimes turgid spaces punctuated by horizonless fields, rivers or lakes, rolling foothills and large skies. At least, in the technical mire, I must argue these are the subconscious meta-narratives that ride to the surface of what ostensibly are abstract works. There are other attributes that stir us to consciousness such as the texture of paint and the surface tensions that emanate from augmented layers, primary, secondary or complementary colours, and fluvial gestures, to convey sublime emotion, chaos and sometimes serenity. These are among the most contemporary or experimental of his paintings that show Serfas is not rutted in one particular genre or style. He remains nimbly committed to thinking critically, passionately and urgently about the environment. The perennial question for him: how to exercise his indefatigable dedication to abstraction while continuing to allude to the visually embedded narratives of open wilderness, the habitats shared by human and animal alike, and the distinct geography of the Prairies or the foothills of the Rockies. The spiritual connection to the land is there in the reverence that he gleans from natural, watershed or arboreal systems – rivers, lakes, forests. Perhaps most importantly, in terms of our collective memory, we experience an opening to new portals in which the ‘push-pull’ between abstraction and manifestations of the subconscious, affect and feeling are dramatized in a fervent and ever innovative appeal to our emotional instincts. If This Kind of Wilderness is a reminder of how nature continues to exert its influence, it also suggests that the heart and soul of this quest is multi-dimensional. A painter of landscape in Canada is festooned with the memory of the palette and frisson of the Group of Seven, but also with the autonomous canvases of the Regina Five and the Emma Lake workshops. Serfas, who came to fruition as a painter with a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Alberta in 2003, has since negotiated a path that is fervently abstract, but rich with allusions to natural topography and the sublime responses we may experience. However, it is also a flawed nature in which entropy or signs of inevitable destruction seep in. He draws spiritual sustenance from a range of sources including Henri Nouwen’s book The Wounded Healer in which the author counsels humility in the face of loss.10 Yet, the project of reimagining a strategy broad enough to touch a chord that is both urgent and affective, leaves one cognizant of the impact of the Anthropocene in what we know to be circumstances increasingly beyond our control. Should we fail to intervene and rectify the environmental conditions that threaten a sustainable future, art, in this respect, remains a clarion call. Serfas makes no pretension about his hybrid version of empirical evidence and his belief in painting’s ability to appeal directly to our cultural memory and critical sensibility. Choiceland remains at the heart of this desire, but in idolizing a world that epitomizes a more harmonious existence Serfas reasserts nature’s hold as a dynamic and immutable entity in our collective imagination. This, also at a time when anxieties are heightened by global warming and the ongoing crisis within First Nations communities concerning unceded territories and unresolved land claims.

Derek Knight has been on faculty in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, since 1985. Educated at Croydon College of Art, London, England, Carleton University, Ottawa, and State University of New York at Buffalo, he teaches courses in 20th century European and North American art history, contemporary art and theory, and contributes to the MA program in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts.

Knight has developed a profile as an independent curator and was awarded the INCO prize for curatorial writing in support of his exhibition N.E. Thing Co.: the Ubiquitous Concept at Oakville Galleries in 1995. He has written catalogue essays, authored scholarly papers, and lectured extensively on contemporary art.

He was Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts between 2009-16 and held Brock University’s first endowed research chair in Creativity, Imagination, and Innovation. He is co-editor of the Small Walker Press.

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10 Bruce Grenville and David MacWilliam. Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog Publishing, 2017. https://www.choiceland.ca/ William Kurelek’s The Ukrainian Pioneer (1971-1976), a six-part series in the National Gallery of Canada, is among the more iconic representations of agriculture based on a trip he made to the Ukraine in 1970. The sixth of the series shows the farmer, his father, waist deep in his golden wheat field at harvest time, which stretches as far as the eye can see. In an email from the artist, December 6, 2020. In conversation with the artist, April 30, 2021. The lyrics of “Shake It Out”, a 2011 song by the British group Florence + The Machine include the line “it’s always darkest before the dawn”, a reference to the nethermind before the dawning of the day. See, for example, Derek Knight, “Shawn Serfas: Trenchant Gesture, Topography and Painting’s Ethereal Nature,” Shawn Serfas: Inland. St. Catharines/Vienna: Small Walker Press/Salon für Kunstbuch, 2019. Serfas has stated that the music he listens to while painting is helpful in establishing both the mood and tone of a canvas such as The Rest of Us or Judges. Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, “Art and Death: Lives Between the Fifth Assessment & the Sixth,” Art in the Anthropocene. Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, eds Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. London: Open Humanities Press, 2015, pp. 6-7. Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. New York: Doubleday, 1979.