24 July – 19 Sept 2023
GVPL Central Branch
735 Broughton St, Victoria, BC
Lauren Fox Artist Statement:
When one of my sons was three, I watched his exuberant scribbles round themselves into circles and enclosed spaces. Soon eyes, mouths, steering wheels, and tires leapt out from staccato stabs and slashes. People and vehicles emerged overnight from what were once chaotic scribbles. I wanted to capture that evanescent moment of transition while joining in with the quality of energetic abandon I had long lost in my own artistic expression.
Over the next eleven years I explored these ideas. Like scribbles emerging, three themes evolved.
First, each painting is a dialogue between my art and the child’s. With each piece, I opened myself to the child’s artistic expression to learn from it and incorporate what I learned into my own expression.
Second, I deepened my approach to portraiture. A child’s art is a powerful window into their self-perception and inner lives. Bringing this into the straightforward realistic representation connected the portrait to their true selves more deeply.
Finally, this decade-long exercise explored the perennial question: “what is art?” Enlarging small doodles on scrap paper and immortalizing them on canvas, elevated the seemingly mundane and disposable to a place of honour, recognizing an often-overlooked truth: we are all born artists. The instinct to create is a fundamental part of being human.
Biography:
Lauren is a portrait and landscape artist living on the traditional unceded territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən people. Her landscape art is an emotional and spiritual response to this place, a response to the qualities of light and atmosphere and the experience of transcendence or introspection they evoke. Likewise, her portraiture captures the spirit of the people she paints using colour and light, meaningful locations, and significant objects. She works with dilute acrylics on paper or canvas, applying multiple layers of transparent colour to create the luminosity that is characteristic of her paintings. Lauren is largely self-taught. Her works are held in private collections in Canada and the US. They have been featured in juried shows in California and British Columbia, including the BC Festival of the Arts, the Federation of Canadian Artists, and the Sooke Fine Arts Show.
See more of her work at www.laurengracefox.com or on Instagram at @laurengracefoxartist
Franny Lidell Artist Statement:
I view art as a snapshot. It can be a snapshot of a time, a place, a feeling, an experience and more. For me, my art is a snapshot of my ever-changing ideas and inspirations. The art that I have shared in this exhibition is a snapshot of my current creative experimentation in collage and painting. One of my favourite parts of the creative process is setting myself up with medium and materials, and with no forethought, seeing where they take me. Often, the results are surprising—for example, my collage work invites an abstract look at the things that make the world both beautiful and absurd. Similarly, in my paintings, I discovered a reality filtered through a kaleidoscope of surrealism. I started the two contributed paintings with familiar elements of nature and used new colours and dreamlike shapes to give these naturalistic elements a new context.
I’m enjoying my current creative snapshot, and I am curious and excited about what’s next.
Biography:
Franny Ladell is a young Victoria creative who explores art through a variety of mediums, including collage, painting, illustration, writing and sound. Franny is inspired by surrealism and ‘pataphysics, which invites a dreamlike feel to her work. This ever-evolving artist is currently exploring and playing with new colour schemes, vintage photos, abstract imagery, sound art and musique concrète.
She is honoured to collaborate with Lauren Fox and is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this exhibition.
