Author Archives: npaul

Nereids Reach the Deep Sea Floor (Detail)

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OKWA: Why Paint? at Art Noise Gallery is now open. It can be viewed in person (yay!) as well as virtually at https://shop.artnoise.ca/pages/in-the-gallery

Nereids Reach the Deep Sea Floor

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Acrylic, ink, crayon, mesh netting on canvas (2021)

Size: w 16″ x h 10″ x d 1.75″

Why Paint? That is the question asked of members of the Organization of Kingston Women Artists. Those in the group who choose paint as their medium have responded and their work will be exhibited in a show at Art Noise Gallery, Kingston, Canada (https://www.artnoise.ca/gallery.html) from 24 June to 07 August 2021. My contributions to this show include this piece as well as Nereids in the Garden of Hippocampus (https://npaulartworks.com/2021/01/13/nereids-in-the-garden-of-hippocampus/).

Nereids Reach the Deep Sea Floor started with an impulse to play – with pigment, mediums, collage – with paint. Over time and iterations I came to understand at last where it was going and brought in the Nereids and their friends: the luminescent, fanged creatures of the dark mountainous world that is the bottom of the ocean. Monstrous in appearance to us, it is they who are under threat, endangered because of the commercial fishery practice of bottom trawling. (Present here: Dragonfish (x2), anomuran, coelacanth, hatchet fish, fangtooth (x2), anglerfish, viperfish (x2), predatory tunicate, frilled shark, gulper eel (x2), tube-eye.)

Thinking It Over

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Acrylic, graphite, water soluble crayon on paper mounted on birch panel (2019/2021)

Size: w 11.5″ x h 18.5″ x d 0.5″

This piece and three others will be in a group show at the Window Gallery in Kingston for the month of March. In person viewing will be possible; a virtual exhibit is also planned. http://www.windowartgallerykingston.com/

Nereids in the Garden of Hippocampus

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Acrylic and ink on canvas (2021)

Size: w 16″ x h 10″ x d 1.75″

Inspired by, and dedicated to, SJ by her AN.

Hippocampus: part of the brain associated with memory, thought to resemble a seahorse.

The starting point for this painting was an image of the hippocampus obtained by means of antibody staining by Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman (2004), reproduced in Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. My sea dragon (barely discernible, certainly not recognizable, in any case upside down) inhabits an underwater garden of memory, dream and desire.

Ram and Unicorn

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Size: w 18″ x h 23.5″

Acrylic on paper (? 1992)

This painting is of two small earthenware creatures (A.D. 9-23) excavated in 1978 from a tomb in Shaanxi Province, China. Because of their poses, they are assumed to be guardians to protect the deceased from demons; to me they appear to be mourning the death. Between them I imagine a bright ribbon, the passing show that is life.

An inkjet print of this painting, mounted on birch panel and hand-finished with acrylic, is currently on display to the end of the month at the Art Noise Gallery in Kingston as part of the annual Show of Smalls (https://www.artnoise.ca/store/c22/NANCY_PAUL.html).

Madonna of the Tenements

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Size: w 9″ x h 12″ x w 1.6″

Inkjet and acrylic. Enhanced photo print hand finished, mounted on painted birch panel.

From an Ektachrome transparency double exposure (Toronto, 1975).

This piece is one of several (17) of mine now on exhibit as part of the annual Show of Smalls, Art Noise Kingston Ontario (https://www.artnoise.ca/store/c22/NANCY_PAUL.html) involving 25+ artists. I took this slide as a student at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD); this is the first time I have reproduced the image for show/sale.

Before the Dance (Tahiti)

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Oil on canvas (?early 1980s)

Size: w 30″ x h 26″

This painting looks better now since the photograph was taken. It’s been cleaned, retouched, and varnished to bring out the deep shadows and rich colours. It is currently on display at The Piggery Gallery in Newburgh (https://www.thepiggerygallery.com/) along with many of my other pieces, large and small, recent and somewhat less so (for example, The Great Black Cow of Lascaux (https://npaulartworks.com/2016/07/31/the-great-black-cow-of-lascaux/).

The annual show of the Organization of Kingston Women Artists, UnRestricted, is currently up at The Window Gallery in Kingston (http://www.windowartgallerykingston.com/). The show can be experienced virtually (https://youtu.be/gm7JgXgVkvI) as well as in person, limited access of course. My piece in the show is On the Beach (Dark Summer), previously posted just over a year ago (https://npaulartworks.com/2019/08/) and my statement addressing the theme “unrestricted” is as follows:

I begin a painting with an idea and an image, sailing into the unknown, unrestricted in subject or intention.  I know where I start and will come to know where I end; between are clusters of small course corrections, at times dramatic changes of direction. The voyage is driven by instinct, the trajectory charted in retrospect; understanding comes afterward. Begun as a figure study, On the Beach ends as the experience of loss and death on a golden day under a sapphire sky.  The figure is burnt, branded and radioactively radiant, yet she looks up with hope, listening and waiting.

Main website: http://www.npaulvisualart.com

Lounging

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Acrylic, graphite, conte on paper mounted on birch panel (2020)

Size: w 9 ” x h 12″ x d 1.5″

Time/Lines, my current solo show, has had an extended run at the Art Noise Gallery and is coming now to an end on Saturday (12 September). The store is open for browsing, as is the gallery. Thank you to Art Noise staff and patrons for your support! Stay well and be kind.