Exhibitions

Quebrada, book with pigment, 5 x 12 x 7 inches



By The End Of The Day, oil on canvas, 12 x 24 inches

Guy Laramée | Quebrada | Thirteen Views on a Stay in Brasil 

December 2022 - January 2023

Guy Laramée's longstanding fascination with Brasil inspires his new Foster/White exhibitions, where he probes questions of belonging and estrangement in a series of atmospheric landscape paintings as well as a group of new sculptures sourced from second-hand bookstores in Florianopolis. Often with mountains or coastlines shrouded in mist, the paintings form a loose, narrative sequence closely associated with the ambiguity between dreaming and waking.

Laramée explains the connection between the paintings and book sculptures by focusing on the linen covers of the books: "...the faded jade tones of the fabric inspired most of my palette for the paintings." The poetics of travel weigh on the artist's mind as he studies questions of identity and belonging: "In traveling between cultures – and countries – something is abandoned, perhaps definitely. What is it? Is it the adhesion to one’s sets of beliefs? Is it the dream of finding a 'perfect world'?"

Explo, book with pigment, 8 x 9.5 x 8 inches

"In Portuguese as in Spanish, the word Quebrada has a double meaning. Literally, it means ‘broken’. But it is also used to designate a ravine, where the landscape gives the impression of being sunken down. Unlike my previous book work, I started each piece by breaking the spine of the book – apparently its most sturdy part. So I formed the book into a curved or broken shape before carving it. I was quite aware of the metaphor while working in this new way: breaking a book is obviously damaging the knowledge it contains. What does this say about our world? After two years of pandemic, we may have started to feel that our civilization is fragile. How long will it last? Some of the book titles evoke that: Paraiso Perdido / Paradise Lost, for example. In a way, our civilization is broken. Can it heal itself or is it bound to make room to a new one? But often times, from stark perspectives stem hope and the will to continue. Thus, using the other meaning of the word Quebrada, I carved those ravines into luxurious landscapes, suggesting that in this sinking down, something of life will go on." - Guy Laramée

Entering The Dream, oil on canvas, 12 x 24 inches

"Over fifteen years, I accumulated about three years in Brasil. My last stay lasted six months. This painting project is an opportunity to encapsulate the feelings that draws one to quit one’s culture, the inner experiences triggered by living in a foreign country. The paintings have a light narrative structure around my last trip in 2022. Each painting has a title that situates it within that narrative. From the first one, Entering the Dream, to the last one, Traveling Between Two Dreams, one questions if one ever comes back from those trips. In traveling between cultures – and countries – something is abandoned, perhaps definitely. What is it? Is it the adhesion to one’s sets of beliefs? Is it the dream of finding a “perfect world”? " - Guy Laramée

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Fauna Flora Figure 208, mixed media on linen, 40 x 40 inches

Shar Coulson | Rhythmic Reflections: Pursuit of Nature's Pulsing Heart
November 2022

Shar Coulson's exhibition Rhythmic Reflections: Pursuit of Nature's Pulsing Heart distills the essence of the natural world through gestural abstraction, revealing core truths that resist categorization beyond her longstanding tripartite series title of Fauna, Flora, and Figure. Her paintings convey a profound physicality and texture while also establishing a dynamic range of contrast and color. With formal training in figurative realism, she perceives nature's underlying patterns in wonderfully surprising ways. She often works from accumulated memories and incorporates earlier plein-air experiments.

Fauna Flora Figure 214, mixed media on linen, 54 x 54 inches


"Each endeavor is a free-flowing exploration where the abstract touches the familiar. Something definite is created, but its mystery is still intact. In the beginning, each painting is abstract in all aspects. It’s throughout the paint application that figuration appears and disappears. Periodically, I’ll define an organic shape, pushing it forward to a place of familiarity. One viewer may see plant-like forms, animals, figures or landscape, but others only textured abstract shapes and patterns bathed in lush earth tones."    - Shar Coulson

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June 2 - 25, 2022
Opening First Thursday June 2, 2022 | 6 - 8 pm 
Artist in Attendance

Convergent Paths is Mason's second body of work created during the pandemic; she continues to find refuge in her home and neighborhood, deepening her exploration of the convergence of natural and man-made. Not shying away from the domestic, Mason embraces it. Her work is inspired by her home environs, including plants found close at hand, and her daily view of the Puget Sound. While her suburban setting can be one that insulates from the harsher realities of climate change, Mason challenges us to look beyond our immediate neighborhoods. Only by thinking globally will we truly impact the safety of our own backyards.

Cameron Anne Mason, Buckhorn (two views), textile including: cotton, linen, rayon velvet, silk velvet, cotton thread and polyester thread, 29 x 11.75 x 4.75 inches

Cameron Anne Mason holds a degree in Visual Communication from the Art Institute of Seattle, and studied Liberal Arts at the University of Washington. Her work has been shown across the country and at galleries around the Northwest, as well as Whatcom Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, and Bellevue Art Museum. Her work was also included in a group exhibition at Miniartextile in Como Italy, and the Rio Patchwork Design Show in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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Steven Nederveen, Secret Hideout, mixed media on panel, 54 x 54 inches

STEVEN NEDERVEEN
FEELS LIKE HOME
April 7 - 23, 2022 
Opening First Thursday April 7, 2022 | 6 - 8 pm 

Steven Nederveen’s artwork has long been grounded in the artist’s meditation practice and influenced by the calming effect of immersion in his favorite places. The artist creates oceanic coastlines, panoramic landscapes, and tree compositions using heightened colors and an almost magical, high contrast golden light. The world becomes a place of wonder and mystery as we recognize what is familiar and discover what we are invited to perceive.

Utilizing a unique and layered process, Nederveen’s artworks combine techniques that result in richly textured surfaces. For his newest body of work, Feels Like Home, Nederveen returns to childhood memories of frequent sailing trips with his family - times that cultivated comfort and familiarity with the waters of the Salish Sea. These early journeys in the waterways of the Western Canadian Coast provided Nederveen with a sense of home deeply connected to the elements of the region. Shores on the Puget Sound, views of open waters and distant landscapes - environmental realities that kindled the exploration of maintaining a transmutable home within the world. Feels Like Home includes works that are in form familiar to inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest; yet by using fantastical colors, Nederveen allows us to see his landscapes as though through a lucid dream.  

Steven Nederveen, Pillars of Home, mixed media on panel, 60 x 48 inches

Correlations created through climate and geography only go so far; Nederveen takes his specific memories and expands the notion of home to envelop the universal potential we all are welcome to experience; finding the peace of home within ourselves.

Steven Nederveen received a Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, and studied at Medicine Hat College, Medicine Hat, AB. He has shown his work across North America. His artwork is part of many collections including Armani Canada, Richmond, BC; Air Canada Lounge at La Guardia, New York, NY; and the Al-Fayed Family Collection, London, UK. He has been the subject of many media features including House and Home Magazine Canada; West Coast Homes and Design; and Vancouver Home Magazine. 

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Tom Burrows, Elisha Bay, polymer resin, 48 x 48 inches

TOM BURROWS
THE CURVE OF TIME V
March 3 - 26, 2022
Opening First Thursday, March 3, 6 - 8 pm - Artist in Attendance
Artist Talk: Saturday March 5, 12:30 pm 

The artwork included in The Curve of Time series by Tom Burrows are named after bodies of water and landmarks from the Inside Passage (Puget Sound near Seattle up to Alaska). The Curve of Time by Wylie Blanchet is inspiration for the series and it takes place in the Inside Passage.  This book recounts Blanchet's summer sailing adventures with her five children and dog in the 1930s and 40s.

After realizing that many places along the Inside Passage were named for the admiralty of the explorers, Burrows decided that he could just as well name them after some of his family who have enjoyed their cabins in the British Columbia waterway for a few generations. Elisha Bay is named for his son, Elisha; the two sail together, and the piece is a rich blue. Other pieces with family names are Gina Rocks, Josh Cove and Yasmine Arm.

Burrows approaches his work with an open, intellectual thoughtfulness. His artworks embody concepts through color, exuding presence and luminosity. Each piece provides its own space for meditative encounter and reflection. The Curve of Time V was born of Burrows observations of and experiences within a familiar region he has long inhabited, but which in some ways has changed noticeably. Surrounded by the Salish Sea, Burrows spends much of the year at his island studio, where the effects of climate change are clear. 

Tom Burrows, Okisollo Channel,  polymer resin, 48 x 48 inches

In his artist statement, Burrows shares “Very early in the summer of 2021, a searing heat dome hung over the island for days emphasizing the presence of a record drought that by mid-August had lowered the local aquifer to the level that my pump failed. We had no water for the first time in fifty years on that island. A third of my planned studio production had to be abandoned.  Luckily, we were spared most of the smoke wafting from the burning mainland forests as I fumbled about trying to reconstruct the plumbing. By November the highest recorded rainfall for that time of year had finally penetrated the heat-baked soil and the aquifer began to rise. Water re-emerged from the faucets.

We live in a time of crisis. The sheltered interconnected seas and channels that line the Northwest coast from Puget Sound to Alaska offer protection from the vast powers of the open Pacific. If one attempts to read the ever-changing light of that inner passage, its tidal surge, the spawn of its creatures, there is a possible solace. The Curve of Time V (a series now in its fifth year), strives to portray the luminosity of those inner coastal waters in its subtle variance."

It is indeed this notion of solace that Burrows so aptly captures and shares. With subtlety and exactitude, Burrows allows his artworks to appear effortless; each is filled with character, highlighting the sublime colors of the natural world from which Burrows draws comfort. Yet far from being static, the wall sculptures contain within their fields of color gentle insistence that we pay attention; to ensure that what inspires us today exists in perpetuity.

 Tom Burrows, Beazley Passage and Sockeye, both polymer resin, both 48 x 30 inches

Throughout his career, Tom Burrows has explored a myriad of sculptural materials and styles, ranging from performative, site-specific installation work to two-dimensional pieces. His work has always been concerned with drawing attention to social and environmental issues; he has presented research-driven artist responses to homelessness, housing, and displacement, and more recently refers to the increasingly evident negative impacts of climate change. Having developed a unique process through his explorations in casting polymer resin, Burrows’ resulting wall sculptures showcase color as an entity, light as an active participant, and stillness as essential.

Tom Burrows has a BA in Art History from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, and studied Sculpture at St. Martin’s College, London, UK. He has shown his work internationally, at galleries across North America, and at places like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, France; and Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC. His work is part of collections including the Canadian Embassy to Japan, Tokyo; Government of Ontario Art Collection, Toronto, ON; the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC; and Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, ON among others.

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 Carol Inez Charney, Invisible Man, chromogenic print, laminated and mounted to panel, 24 x 24 inches, edition of five

The colorful curls and wisps of smoke in Carol Inez Charney’s newest series are sophisticated and elegant while being rich with metaphor. The series, Secondhand Smoke, highlights the dangers of cultural censorship, the limiting of individualism and artistic expression. Book burnings and the destruction of artwork have been an all too common practice in both modern and historic eras, public demonstrations meant to show the power of authoritarian governments. However, the pieces in Secondhand Smoke seem to remind us that such censorship can sneak in; can whisper and spread like rumors, creeping in around the edges, as smoke can.

Secondhand Smoke also poignantly considers the dichotomy between artistic expression and the proliferation of falsified information – as well as the resulting political division. But the pieces speak softly; Charney was inspired to create work both beautiful and reflective, in a way providing respite from the world while at the same time holding a mirror up to it.

Carol Inez Charney, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, chromogenic print, laminated and mounted to panel, 24 x 24 inches, edition of five

The images in Secondhand Smoke share their titles with literary works that have, at points throughout recent history, been banned or burned by governmental entities seeking to silence individual voices; says Charney, “Incinerating intellectual, creative and critical thought has harmful reverberating effects on society, just as second hand smoke does for all of us. It’s about maintaining control of individuals by censoring the ideas necessary to evolve: suppressing enlightenment and creative freedom.”

Carol Inez Charney, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, chromogenic print, laminated and mounted to panel, 24 x 24 inches, edition of five

Known for her characteristically eloquent photographic abstractions, Charney here utilizes a more ethereal approach. “Ultimately smoke represents aftermath—what remains of provocative of ideas. Secondhand Smoke is a cautionary tale of the growing threats facing artistic expression around the world.”

Charney received a BA in painting from the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, and an MFA in Photography from San Jose State University, San Jose, CA. She has shown her work at galleries across the country, and in museums such as the Museum of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; and the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley, CA. She has received numerous awards, and her photographs are part of collections including the AT&T Art Collection, New York, NY; Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA; Reese Witherspoon's Art Collection, Los Angeles, CA; and the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, Irvine, CA.

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