Fall 2004 - 17th Year, no 1

Volume 65, once again brings you the Canadian art stories and sections you have come to expect and enjoy in MAGAZIN'ART. In Canadian Masters Lisanne Le Tellier looks back at the life of Anne Savage, a Montrealer who had parallel careers as a working artist and as an influential art educator. Working in oils she was a strong advocate of developing a Canadian art form that reflected the country.

She was a member of the Montreal Beaver Hall Hill Group and later became president of the Canadian Group of Artists, an extension of the Group of Seven. A realist and modernist Savage approached a sense of natural abstraction through her ability to reduce forms. Her later work featured a more complex and stylized approach that also drew on a greater sense of luminosity that showed semi-abstract leanings through her sophisticated use of dashes of colour. The story is accompanied by some truly magnificent illustrations and this issue's cover illustration is her 1920 work Country Scene.

Features

In Toronto Painters, John Meyer looks at abstraction with a Polish flair. Jacek and Agnieszka Rudnicki were both born in Poland and met at the Ontario College of Art. As artists their styles and approach are distinctively different, although both have strong compositional abilities and both force the audience to ask themselves questions. Their work can be described as brooding except that it also contains a triumphant sensibility, containing strong figurative elements. The work of both is in enough demand that they have problems assembling enough paintings to mount individual solo exhibitions.

Art in the Feminine Perspective brings you two stories this issue. Lisanne Le Tellier writes about representational painter Lise Labbe who paints figurative, narrative works which bring to life her childhood in the Montreal working class district of Rosemont. She works in oils and her style can be described as slightly na•ve, emphasizing the gaiety of childhood life. Antoine Tardiff reports on young abstract expressionist painter Katia Poulin who works in mixed media. Poulin attempts to reveal the interior experience of reality and transcend decoration. At times she will mix charcoal with acrylics and at other times she will mix sand into acrylics to provide texture. Her work is distinguished by the figurative elements she works into it.

Lise Labbe The Game Before 8994 20 x 24 Oil  Sold Click on this image pfor a full page display

In West Coast Artist, Richard Waugh shows us how Impressionist Mike Svob developed into the artist he is today. Svob works in watercolours, acrylics and oils and applies watercolour techniques to other mediums. His signature is the use of strong bold colour. Svob strays from strict reality by painting his subjects in whatever colour he wants which in some circumstances gives his work a strong architectural feeling. To date Svob has had over 50 exhibitions and painted more than 22 large scale murals. His work is compelling and attractive through his use of colour and light.

In On Exhibit Amelie Menard shows us how representational artist Pierre Desjardins mines the rich vein of Monet's impressionism with success. Working in oils he concentrates on urban scenes catching the play of light on form and people. His goal is to produce on canvass the emotions he feels when viewing his subjects. His work is lush, sincere and filled with the effect of light.

In Canadia Art History Tamara Pasztor brings alive William Blair Bruce. Bruce was born in Hamilton and studied in Paris during the summer of 1881, where he attended the Academie Julian with Fleury and Bouguereau and then spent a year in the art colony at Barbizon. Bruce's work is mainly representational with more than a dash of impressionism. His work reveals a strong compositional ability that worked equally well in a number of diverse themes, marine, landscape, mythological and genre studies.