James North Art Collective

Sherelle Wilsack taps the more obviously figural. She loves vivid hues, a flat, simplified linear style and a frontal pose that make her human figures look like ancient icons, though without the sacred messages.  In Mennonite Girl, a big oil on canvas, the sitter poses against a bright acid-green background. This green contrasts with the sombre darkness of her clothing, but is intensified by the scarlet cap.  She looks directly at us. Wilsack carefully outlines the almond-shaped eyes, long nose and red lips. But she paints the cheeks as two soft-edged red circles and adds dark smudges to the eyes.

‘Mennonite’ by Sherelle Wilsack

Wilsack’s simplified style is at its best in the way she depicts the hand. It sticks out of the blue of the dress but it’s not attached to an arm or sleeve.  Her repertoire also includes animals, fruit and trees, all of them bright and beautiful, including a cheeky lamb, a big red and green profile portrait of a rooster and pair of pears ready to burst out of their frames.

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.

dhaggo@thespec.com

Sherelle Wilsack

What: Feast

Where: James North Studio, 328 James St. N.

When: until June 3

Phone: 905-528-6437

Opening Reception 7 pm May 11 during the June James North Art Crawl

See new work by the James North Art Collective’s members in the Kitchen Gallery
and downstairs in the Photography Gallery

Wednesday – Saturday, 12 noon – 5 pm & Sunday 12 noon – 4 pm

Red is beautiful. In Russian, that statement is almost tautologous, since an older meaning of the word for red is “beautiful.”

Red cries out for attention. It evokes life, excitement, danger, love and hunger.

And it’s the inspiration for Red, a group show by the James North Art Collective.

Red’s Homecoming, by Kelly Drennan, is a striking mixed-media construction that juxtaposes red with white and black. The Hamilton artist, who likes fairy tales, introduces us to Little Red Riding Hood with a twist.

Drennan’s red-hooded heroine, concisely modelled with a few basic materials, takes centre stage. She leaps out with her red hoodie and small red mouth against a white face. A white furry wolf’s head rests on her forehead.

Red carries a scroll, made of birchbark, tied with red string. Drennan painted the scroll black. “White usually represents purity, innocence, peace, virginity,” she says. “Having been out in the world, Red has learned that what goes on in the world is not so white. The scroll contains life lessons.”

Drennan imagines Red, now white-haired and wiser, returning to her childhood village, represented by rows of squares topped with triangles, the traditional shapes of houses. She has conquered her fears and returns home triumphant.

“Red,” Drennan says of her heroine, “is a symbol of female strength, independence and survival.”

Sandee Ewasiuk offers a couple of red bird paintings. In Red Birds, a woman, barefoot but wearing a red dress and a string of pearls, appears to be sitting in a tree flanked by a pair of red birds, symbols of love, life and rebirth.

Ewasiuk’s simplified style is at its best. She paints the woman with a large head, big heavily lidded eyes, and long arms and legs. The birds are succinctly depicted as irregular ovals tapering sharply at the ends. Ewasiuk links the three through the colour red, then adds soft-edged shapes in greens, blues and pinks.

Drennan and Ewasiuk have simplified their human figures, but Gise Trauttmansdorff needs no helping hand when it comes to simplification. The local ceramist has reduced her figure to a white arm and hand sticking out of the wall. It’s waiting to grab us as we walk by, offering us excitement in the form of a red key on a chain dangling from the elegant fingers. Dare we take it?

John Kinsella’s take on red involves reds in the local landscape. Willow Reflections, Stoney Creek, is one of several of his landscapes in this exhibition. In this wonderfully textured small painting, Kinsella focuses on a lone golden tree seen across a body of water. He paints the sky as a series of radiating brush strokes so that lines of energy seem to emanate from the tree.

The tree’s verticality joins the brilliantly coloured horizontals, including a strip of red that further energizes the view.

There are more great pieces by David McLaughlin, Renate Minoo, Doreen Veri and Frances Ward, among others. And don’t miss the photographic section of the exhibition downstairs.

See photos of work in the exhibition at http://www.thespec.com/whatson/article/675064–ready-for-red

Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art.

dhaggo@thespec.com