Tag Archives: Art and War

Ollie in Gaza

Posted by npaul on

Acrylic, ink, re-harvested PETE plastic on linen (2024)

This piece is now finished. It will be exhibited in Kingston for the month of November (Window Gallery) as part of the OKWA (Organization of Kingston Women Artists) annual show. Here is the statement I wrote in response to the show’s theme, Change:

“Ollie the orangutan was photographed in 1988 for a book about endangered species.  In my painting he is bewildered, palms up in despair, bearing witness to the death and destruction in Gaza over the past year.  This artwork itself has seen much change, originally a dense network of red dots but layer by layer overlaid with paint and buried in plastic rubble, symbolizing the tens of thousands of individual lives lost.  If he is still alive, Ollie is 42 years old.  I show him fading from our view just as these magnificent creatures are vanishing from the world, approaching extinction.”

Into White (III) Disintegration

Posted by npaul on

Acrylic and graphite powder on canvas (2023)

Size: w 16″ x h 12″ x d 1″

Part III of Triptych Into White (I, II, III: Destruction, Extinction, Disintegration)

Into White (I, II, III:  Destruction, Extinction, Disintegration) — see previous posts for October and November — is a response to the current wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East, to the accelerating rate of extinction of species, to our rising fear for the future of the planet. It is currently on display at the Tri-Art Gallery in Kingston ON until early January 2024 as part of White, the first in a series of exhibits based on pigments. The entire show can be viewed online at https://www.triartgallery.ca/white

White is terror, white is peace; extreme heat and bitter cold.  For me, white especially symbolizes absence, before the beginning and after the end, the initial void and the final emptiness.  White is eternity, what always was and what will remain when time runs out.  I see white as non-existence but not to be confused with death, as it is outside the circle of mortality within which all other colours are eventually absorbed into black.  White is thus unknowable as it lies at one remove, not next or beside but one step away from life, after the chalk line has been erased.

Destruction:  The action or process of causing so much damage to something that it no longer exists or cannot be repaired.

Extinction:  The complete disappearance of a species from Earth.

Disintegration:  The process of losing cohesion and unity; of coming to pieces, falling apart.