Loch Gallery Toronto is delighted to feature a selection of spirited sculptures by the urban folk artist Patrick Amiot. The exhibition features both recent work using recycled material and found objects alongside the artist's roots in ceramics. Amiot's whimsical portrayal of his subjects spans his entire career and is encapsulated by this collection of artwork. From wall-mounted protruding cityscapes to kinetic sculpture to furniture, the artwork is sure to delight and inspire. While Amiot excels in spontaneous but precise sculpting, his partner, Brigitte Laurent completes the artwork with a sophisticated sense of colour and fine brushwork. Together, they create artwork that is playful, insightful, and endlessly enjoyable.

Keith Harder’s exhibition, From Perception to Insight, is a survey of his career including paintings from the 1980s to now. The Calgary iteration of the show will also feature Gravitas: Inside Out, an interactive and immersive experience that allows viewers to virtually explore Harder’s land installation Gravitas.
 

Keith Harder was introduced to acrylic and oil painting in the Three Hills High School art program taught by his father. Painting became the central feature of his education through several degrees and then in a 36 year career as a university Professor of Studio Art.

Early in his formative development he was mentored at the University of Calgary by the realist painter John Hall. The formal side of his painting practice was influenced later by abstract painters, Doug Haynes and Phil Darrah at the University of Alberta. Studying other paintings by artists such as Rackstraw Downes, John Salt, and Antonio Lopez Garcia also contributed to Harder’s methods and thought. Eventually he was inspired by Canadian artist Jack Chambers to investigate the numinous quality of the external visual experience and, similarly, chose a descriptive approach as a painting methodology for his investigations.
 

In the early years of his practice, a faithfulness to observation dominated his approach. By paying close attention to describing appearances he hoped to reveal moments of import. Initially photographic sources were used but later direct observation was included in certain projects.
 

The descriptive methodology was applied to a variety of subjects and genres, including landscape, still life, and portraiture. Later in his career, narrative features and elements of interpretation and invention were added into this body of work. The current exhibition samples an array of these approaches.
 

While there have been a variety of investigations over the course of Harder’s career, it is possible to detect a particular interest threading through the last four decades of his production. This interest can be traced through the intermittent imagery of weather, sky, and flight. Such images lend themselves to the consideration of themes that could range from joy, to struggle, to threat, and to loss. In addition to such content, many paintings invoke a deep sense of being in place, and in time.
 

Thematic contents get developed within the arena of thought known as hermeneutics, as they seek to winkle out, understand and interpret the nature of the numinous that are encountered in the experience of being. Taking the form of visual experiments, the paintings are concentrated attempts to detect and reveal the pulse of meaning within the daily rush and grind of living. Metaphor and allusion come into play in the choices of subject, staging, and the quality of light. These are the means by which something greater might arise than merely the sum of parts.

Nick Rooney's 2022 solo exhibition Nature’s Edge used natural history and the symbolism attributed to animals to examine how the edge of each space functions as both a beginning and an end. On the Other Side builds on these ideas to further explore the movement through this liminal space. Liminal space is defined as the space that sits between the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, reflection and action, and stimulus and response.

In removing natural colours and reducing to a monochromatic palette, Rooney's focus becomes the relationships both in colour harmony and mutualism. The search for balance in the geometric forms and empty space removes the animal subjects from any traditional setting and context. This sets up a dialogue that creates and explores an environment rooted in the transition where tension, pressure, and struggle often reside.

Nick Rooney (b. 1989 Canada) obtained his MA in Painting from the University of the Arts London, at the Camberwell College of Arts in London, England. Much of his early career was spent focusing on the craft of oil painting and developing a contemporary art practice deeply rooted in art history. His current studio work and research look at the relationship between the reductive formalism of geometric minimalism and the complexity of classical realism. Nick has had the opportunity to exhibit both nationally and internationally, having been selected to participate in the Saatchi Gallery’s exhibition London Grads Now. Nick Rooney now resides in Calgary (Mohkínsstsisi), Alberta where he is an instructor at the University of Calgary and the Alberta University of the Arts.

What allows a painting to be most available to sustained attention is not only its physical proximity to the viewer but also the artist’s closeness to the impulse of its making. In Louis de Niverville’s painted collage that kind of closeness always involved time as a condition of the making, and on occasion time became a theme in itself.

In 1939, when de Niverville was six years old, he was “stashed away” in the hospital for “about four and half years.” Because spinal tuberculosis was thought to be easily communicable, he was permitted to be visited only occasionally by his parents. To survive emotionally and psychologically, he began to “cut out comic strip characters (Superman, Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Blondie)”. He later wrote, “I kept them all in a little envelope and when I wanted one of them I would bring it out and make it talk and give it a life.”

In the mid 1960’s during a crisis in in his technical and creative process, he returned to his childhood technique of cutting out paper. Now he painted the sheets first, often vigorously or using arcane techniques. A pair of scissors was also a way of making line, a kind of drawing. But what allowed it all to happen was the cut out. By way of collage, de Niverville effectively reinvented not only his celebrated painting and drawing practices but he also returned to his earliest and most urgent form of making. A small sampling of this painted collage practice can be seen in Louis de Niverville, The Art of Collage which includes work made over forty years.

The earliest work in the exhibition, Time Machine is a masterpiece of de Niverville’s mid-career. A central figure seems to be entirely wrapped in strangely elegant garments ­­­– a beautiful, brown trench coat and a pinkish hood. These garments might be made of paper and perhaps, at the same time, they are not. Brass clock pieces like clouds fall from the blue sky. Some of these formations look more like living entities than machine parts or cloud vapours, and they evoke ghostly, nineteenth century cyanotype photos. Something to do with memory and its traces.

When de Niverville was in the hospital he often watched the scene visible across the road. He would “hang onto the clouds and marvel at their formations […]. In fact I saw my father quite often in the clouds […]. It was like being at the movies…. like a never ending spectacle.” With Time Machine De Niverville has produced an arresting image of time. It is easily identifiable as the time experienced when one is ill or in hospital, when clock time has been detonated. It is also the time that exists for everyone in the mind, when the eyes are turned inward, torn away from time keeping devices. Fantastic, and yet a layered, associative image of reality.

~ E.C. Woodley

All quotations are from Louis de Niverville’s “Pentimenti” in the catalogue for Louis de Niverville Retrospective curated by Joan Murray at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and travelling to thirteen venues between the spring of 1978 and the winter of 1980.

Loch Gallery has the pleasure to announce “Mountain Memory: The Rocky Mountain Series", an exhibition of exceptional new oil paintings by Ron Bolt.

In Bolt’s own words he describes the inspiration for this series:

When I was sixteen my father took the family, by train, to Vancouver. For five days the train cars were our living room, kitchen and bedroom. From the dense, mysterious forests of the Precambrian shield, to Winnipeg and the big sky country of the prairies, we approached the mountains. They appeared on the horizon like a string of diamonds sparkling against a brilliant, cloudless blue. An image lodged permanently in my mind.

Almost seventy years have passed. In 2022 I took my second train trip through the Rockies. This collection reflects a very recent experience and the vivid memories of a young art student.

Favouring a camera as a sketching tool, Bolt uses photography to collect visual information and to revive emotional memory. Starting in Vancouver, Bolt’s recent journey took him to Kamloops before travelling through the Rocky Mountains. He stopped in Banff and Lake Louise before making his way through the Columbia Icefield and ending in Jasper. Prepared with his camera in hand, Bolt set out to capture the rugged wilderness and the imposing grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. The results are seen here through his paintings of “Summit #1 Columbia Ice Fields”, “Sunwapta Valley”, “High, Bright, and Clear”, and “Bow Falls”.

Loch Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Leon Belsky, Ron Bolt, John B. Boyle, DP Brown, Rebecca Campbell , Philip Craig, Shannon Craig Morphew, Paul Fournier, John Hall, John Hansen, Ciba Karisik, Barry McCarthy, Louis de Niverville, and David Thauberger.

 Loch Gallery is delighted to present "New paintings: Trinity, Port Rexton and Bonavista" an exhibition by Philip Craig featuring new paintings inspired by a recent trip to Newfoundland.

Philip Craig describes his latest collection of paintings:

Let me tell you about my relationship with Newfoundland.  In 1975 I took my small family— Diane and our one year old son Jordan—to live in Newfoundland where I worked as set designer for the CBC. These were very busy and wonderful years. As my family grew, so did my experience as a painter. The first exhibition of my work was held at the LSPU hall in downtown St. John's and consisted of landscapes and portraits inspired by my life in Newfoundland. As a set designer I had ample opportunity to travel the island and found an abundance of inspiration.

After ten years we packed up three children and returned to Ontario so that I could paint full time. I have returned to Newfoundland many times since. Each time I gravitate more and more towards the small communities of Trinity, Port Rexton and Bonavista where I can work and spend time with our dear old friends. This summer I set up my studio in a historic forge in the town of Trinity. This forge was beautifully restored with considerable effort by my good friend Chris O’Dea. I would rise early every morning and walk the streets of this ancient fishing port. The light would change and the morning mist would lift, revealing interesting compositions of the unique little houses and churches. Down by the shore I would find the boats and fishing stages reflected in the harbour. This trip had a marked effect on each piece in this exhibition; I shifted my pallet and paint application to tell the tale. There is no doubt that there is an emotional tug to return again and again to our rocky island home. —Philip Craig

The Loch Gallery is proud to feature works by a selection of our gallery artists including: Leon Belsky, Ron Bolt, Roberta Bondar, Gerard Burns, Philip Craig, Shannon Craig Morphew, Paul Fournier, John Hall, Ciba Karisik, Barry McCarthy, John McKee, Valerie Palmer, Barbara Pratt, Carol Stewart and David Thauberger.

Loch Gallery is delighted to present a special exhibition of Realism painting. In the first room of the gallery this exhibition will feature eight paintings by Valerie Palmer, including Valerie’s latest painting, Sea-Change. In the second room of the gallery we will be presenting a selection of new and recent paintings by D.P. Brown, John Hansen, Keith Harder, Ron Bolt, Bogdan Molea, Roberto Rosenman and W. David Ward, all working in the realism tradition.

Loch Gallery Toronto is delighted to feature a selection of new and recent paintings by two masters of storytelling—Tony Luciani and Tyson Grumm.

When defining his work, Tony Luciani places himself in a tradition of realism that is interpretive rather than photographic. His paintings are all rooted in comprehensive preparatory drawings and studies which he completes from life on location. Once back in the studio these drawings are refined on a larger scale where details are eliminated or elaborated upon. While working on a painting, Luciani values equally the mood and feeling he gets from the subject, as well as the realistic likeness of the subject. The outcome is a painting into which the viewer is drawn—enthralled by the detail, and a curious to discover a deeper, more significant meaning.

Tyson Grumm, on the other hand, paints unique and nostalgic worlds that often blur the lines between past and present, and reality versus imagination. Grumm’s ingenious titles and freeze-frame images give a feeling that the viewer has stumbled into the middle of a story for which they must create their own narrative to continue the tale. Drawn entirely from his imagination, Grumm’s colourful and whimsical work incorporates humans, wild animals, and whimsical backdrops to create his surreal and fantastical world, into which he invites the viewer to become lost in the topsy-turvy wonderland.

For the end of summer we’re delighted to feature a selection of whimsical sculptures by the urban folk artist Patrick Amiot alongside a selection of artwork by Nick Rooney, Louis de Niverville, Tyson Grumm, Paul Fournier, Shannon Craig Morphew, David Thauberger, John B. Boyle, Rebecca Campbell and Philip Craig.

This summer, Loch Gallery Toronto is pleased to showcase a rotating selection of paintings, sculpture and photography by our gallery artists. We welcome art enthusiasts and collectors to view this exciting mix of styles, subjects and mediums created by artists of exceptional talent.