Bailey Doucette
Ok.
March 22 - March 26, 2021
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery
The word “ok” might be defined as an exclamation used to express approval, acceptance and competency, or possibly, mediocrity and indifference. For me, the acronym “ok” has turned into a denotation of dismissal and neglect. Words and symbols are inherently impactful. When associated negatively, simple words can become increasingly repugnant. Our brains automatically make these associations based upon experience. Whether we like it or not, particular phrases, pictures, and memories will never permanently fade.
This exhibition emulates the playfulness and unpredictability of everyday life through the use of joyful colours, whimsical shapes, and expressive forms in juxtaposition to jarring words and inquisitive symbols that personally resonate. What may appear as fatuous abstract marks on canvas and paper are, at times, emphasized in direct correlation to emotional responses from the recollection of a relationship built upon miscommunication, manipulation and toxicity.
The dichotomy created forces the viewer into questioning which decisions are significant or arbitrary, whether visual associations are meaningful or coincidence, public or personal. Through physical layering, adding and removing, covering and revealing, this work alludes to the complexities of memory and how something innate can cause impact to the present-day through random and seemingly innocent occurrences that, alternatively, carry personal implications.
About the Artist
Bailey Doucette is a visual artist and dance instructor based out of Saskatchewan, Canada. Since 2015, she has been actively studying the influence of colour and shape through mixed media practices with a heavy focus on drawing as a medium at the University of Saskatchewan. Doucette’s work has been previously exhibited at the Snelgrove Gallery in Saskatoon among her fellow students in the pursuit of her BFA degree. The content of her artwork combines expressive whimsical shapes with emotional responses presented through phrases and hidden symbolism. This process explores the influence of how the events of our past affect our every-day experiences.
Kim Klippenstein
Anamnesis
March 22 - March 26, 2021
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery
an · am · ne · sis
The remembering of things from a supposed previous existence.
The three dimensions which are most commonly talked about are length, width, and depth. Combined, these dimensions give us our reality, three-dimensional space within which we live, interact, grow, and change.
The fourth dimension, though often forgotten, is perhaps the most powerful because it gives meaning to all existence within the first three: Time.
Without time, there would be no differentiation between the first time a pencil sank comfortably into my soft, untrained hand as the shaky lines flowed, and my most recent work put forth through years of intricate study, thought, and practice. They would exist simultaneously, merging life’s meaning and taking it away all at once. Lines I have constructed and re-constructed, and lines I have yet to lay, would all overlap and be impossible to separate.
They do not need to be separate.
They should not be separate.
An artist’s creed is to embrace the shape of life and reality, to understand the ebbs and flows of earthly philosophies and cosmic transience. If art is an expression of the self, time is as important as any of the first three dimensions… if not, more so.
If lines can waver, shapes can transform, and space can shift, time is also a fluid medium. I am not who I was, I am not who I will be, and I am not even who I am now. Yet, I am all at once.
About the Artist
I grew up in Saskatoon where there wasn’t all that much for me to do growing up, so I turned to my imagination to create worlds of fantasy and impossibility while also being fascinated by what I was confronted with in reality. I have always felt a connection to art and movement, wanting to capture the details of life and perplexed by Disney animation. My mom tells me that I’ve been trying to draw since the moment I figured out how to hold a pencil, and as I’ve grown, my style and subject matter have continued to develop, evolve, and at times transform entirely. Sometimes I have trouble pinning myself to a certain aesthetic or practice because I want to do everything at once – realism drawing, cartoons, digital art, photomanipulation, photography, sculpture, animation – but I always, eventually, feel drawn back to that familiar comfort of a pencil in my hand.
