Barbara Milne Woven
19 November - 7 December, 2022
Barbara
19 November - 7 December, 2022
Barbara
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.
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.
“
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.”
- MilneWoven - Bow River, 40” x 40”, oil on board
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
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)
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
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
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
“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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