Barbara Milne: Woven Exhibition Catalog 2022

Barbara Milne Woven

19 November - 7 December, 2022

Barbara

MILNE

OPENING RECEPTION

SATURDAY, 19 November, 2022 from 2-5 PM Artist in attendance preview: Thursday & Friday, 17-18 November, 2022

Barbara Milne was born in Windsor Ontario and received a Bachelor of arts with honours from York University before moving to Calgary in the early 80s.

She has been a sessional instructor at the Alberta College of art (now the Alberta University of the Arts) from 1998 - 2012.

She has had many exhibitions nationally and internationally, with Collections in Iceland, Belgium, and more.

Like many artists working within the genre of landscape, Barbara Milne works in both the studio and on location, producing a siz able body of paintings and drawings. Milne’s paintings are rich in symbols and metaphors. Shape, colour, and textures combine and resonate to describe a parallel experience of place. Memory plays a complex role in Milne’s paintings. Memory not only involves the physical reconstruction of the artist’s experience of a place: but also embodies a recollection of previous paintings, histories, and styles. While Milne’s landscapes derive from real settings, the artist tran scends the particularities of place, producing images that are richly layered, evoking a sense of wonder.

a little about Barbara Milne

Woven - Hydrangea, 2022, 16” x 19.25”, oil on panel

Woven, an exhibition of oil paintings by Barbara Milne, will open November 19th 2022 at Calgary’s Wallace Galleries. At its heart is a selection of works completed over the past three years. For this exhibition, the artist has drawn inspiration from her observation of the natural world, her knowledge of historical art, and from her extensive collection of textiles, photography, collage, and earlier pieces in her studio. Past work speaks to new work in an ongoing conversation - netting a full range of expression.

Drawing on her love of textiles, Milne chose to call the exhibition Woven likening it to a length of woolen tweed, a seemingly simple warp and weft construction which, upon closer scrutiny, proves to be an increasingly complex and seductive read. Such is the case here.

Several paintings are centred on the exuberance of blossoms, their ephemeral beauty, and their eventual demise. Each flower is a vehicle of change, of what we experience and observe in our own lives. Certain passages are descriptive while others are abstract. Lustre is surrounded by tension and interference. Through the microcosm of a single bloom or an isolated tree, one sees into a larger unsettling world. Beauty is explored in the tradition of Vanitas painting, there is an awareness of the fleetingness of existence.

8 Woven - Garden, 48” x 96”, oil on canvas

“

I am looking at the experience of wonder through juxtaposition of the unexpected. I have long been aware of our fragile relationship to the land, pondering ideas of stewardship and vulnerability. In these works, we are ever reminded of temporality - of presence and absence - nature as we encounter it and as we remember it.”

- Milne

Woven - Bow River, 40” x 40”, oil on board

Inspiration

Milne and her husband are both inspired by her wondrous garden; with poppies, hydrangeas, crabapple trees, Hopps, daisies, and so many more beautiful plants there is no surprise that the oasis brought forth these fantastic works.

The subtlety of colour and atmosphere in many works have elements of Turner and yet the complexity and texture come from observation.

14 Woven - Path, 48” x 72”, oil on canvas

In the Studio & behind the scenes

The creative process is different for everyone; this is no different for the artist.

It is always fun and insightful to visit a studio, to learn of how the artist works and to have a birds eye view of the creative process.

Milne works on collage pieces to free herself and to expand the possibilities of her work. These two works, in the follow pages are examples of that process. They are tools she uses to build on and to inform her work.

Veil 4, 9” x 11.5”, acrylic, collage on paper

Veil 7, 9.5” x 11.75”, acrylic, collage on paper

Woven - Columbine, 40” x 40”, oil on panel 20

24

Woven - Pool 48” x 36”, oil on canvas

Woven - Pool 19.5” x 16” oil on panel 25

26

Woven - Peony, 40” x 40”, oil on panel

28 Woven - Petal, 48” x 72”, oil on canvas

30

Woven - Cherry Tree 16” x 22”, oil on panel

C.V. (select)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2022 Wallace Galleries, Calgary

2019 Edge Gallery Calgary

2017 Paul Kuhn Gallery

2017 Responding To the Collection of the Whyte Museum

2016 Responding To the Collection of the Whyte Museum

2013 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2012 Edge Gallery, Canmore

2011 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2008 Nickle Arts Museum

Atelier Gallery, Vancouver

Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2006 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2004 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2003 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver

2002 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

2001 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver

2000 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

1998 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

James Baird Gallery, St. John’s, Nfld.

1997 Atelier Gallery, Vancouver

1996 Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary

AWARDS:

2009 ACAD Professional Development Funding – Gullkistan Residency, Iceland

2008 ACAD Professional Development Funding for Vancouver Exhibition, April

2008 Alberta Foundation for the Arts Project Grant

2004 Nominated and elected to the Royal Canadian Academy

2003 Alberta Foundation for the Arts Project Grant

1998 Alberta Foundation for the Arts Project Grant

COLLECTIONS:

Canadian Embassy, Brussels, Belgium

Alberta Foundation for the Arts

Whyte Museum of Canadian Rockies

Canada Council Art Bank

Calgary Allied Arts Foundation

Glenbow Museum

Air Canada

Nickle Arts Museum Bank of America

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

“Painting the Whyte” Portia Priegart, Galleries West 2016

Smith, Caroline, CBC Radio Interview for “Overland” Exhibition, Jan. 2009 Salahub,Jennifer, Paths,Corridors and Intervals, Exhibition Essay for Cata logue “Overland” 2008

Christine Sowiak, The Cadance of Land, Exhibition Essay fo Catalogue “Overland” 2008

Tousley, Nancy, Barbara Milne: Critic’s Pick Calgary Herald October 2008

Robin Laurence Barbara Milne: Overland and Erin McSavaney: Seven Paintings of South Vancou ver Georgia Strait, April 17, 2008

Patricia Ainslie and Mary-Beth Laviolette, An Illustrated Guide to a Hundred and Fifty Years of Alberta Art, 150 pages, soft cover 2007

Mary-Beth Laviolette, Alberta Art Cronicle: A history of Contemporary Art in Alberta: 1970 to 2000, 300 Pages, soft cover

Vida,Sandra, Prairie Landscapes are Humming with Life, Fast Forward, May 2nd. 2002

Gustafson,Paula, Barbara Milne at Atelier Gallery,Asian Art News,Jan. 1999

Laviolette,Mary-Beth, The Skoki Expedition, Artichoke, Feb 1999

Severson, Ann. A Prairie Girl’s Maritimes, Fast Forward, May 1998

Woodrow, Paul, The Spectacle of Memory, Exhibition Essay for Catalogue,”Island” 1998

Tousley, Nancy, Brush with Beauty, Calgary Herald Dec. 6th. 1996

Johnson, Mia, Preview, Preview Magazine, Nov. 1995

Lawrence, Robin, Saturday Review, The Vancouver Sun, Nov. 4th. 1999

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