So dawn goes down to day
Art Gallery at EverGreen
Curated by Katherine Dennis
SEPTEMBER 17 - NOVEMBER 13, 2022
Coquitlam, BC, CA
So dawn goes down to day brings attention to Lyse lemieux’s recent incorporation of luscious colour into her paintings. The exhibition features work from several series made within the last five years that are connected by an undercurrent of emotional tension. The accompanying earlier sculpture, Collared Column (2016).points to the ongoing influence of textiles in her practice, emerging in recent paintings through intense patterning and colour that mimic fabric. This vibrant exhibition of paintings on paper an canvas reveal the porous membrane between internal and external landscapes, which the artist explores through psychological resonance of colour, the fragmented and hybrid human forms, motifs from nature and the grid. Intricately detailed with saturated colour, dense layers of paint and Lemieux’s signature use of black, these vivid paintings reveal as much about the inner workings of the artists’s mind as they do about the physical forms they depict. Lemieux’s art holds a constant tension between joyfulness and anxiety: during moments of calm the artist’s brushstrokes are open and expansive, contrasting with the focused and detailed layers of patterning she creates in times of unease. Large painterly gestures - evident in the ruff-like collar and oval head forms in her new series Famille (2022)- rival tiny, repetitive dots and fine details of Dorsale. La Couleur de mes mots (2022), while her intuitive and expressive use of colour further conveys the artist’s mindset. The paintings express both a fragility and a wry sense of humour. - Katherine Dennis, Curator
So dawn goes down to day, Art Gallery at Evergreen, 2022 Photo credit Rachel Topham Photography
