One has come home to find herself; the other is still searching.
Two art exhibitions that have just opened at Gallery Vertigo express the personal search for meaning in a wide world full of possibilities.
Vernon-raised visual artist Heidi Maddess, who recently returned home after travelling much of the world through her work as a student recruiter for Emily Carr University, is showing her highly personal work, Nature made me what I am now.
The exhibition was completed as part of her masters studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and explores how personal demons – shadows – thread themselves through sensibilities of physiological, emotional and psychological landscapes.
The work features self-portraits of the artist as a mythical-like beast, drawn in graphite, charcoal and ink, incorporating photo collage, as well as ink/graphite washes and watercolours.
The work is also the result of Maddess’ struggle with physical illness.
“During two artist residencies I was initiated into the mythologies and landscape of my Icelandic heritage, in which mythical forces are believed to have a real physical presence,” she said. “During my struggles with illness, all assumptions of self have been stripped away. Demons occupy spaces of peripheral vision and are at times tricksters purposefully keeping me off balance.
“At other times they are beacons for reintegrating dissociated fragments of self. If you dream about wrestling with the devil, it may only be yourself you are wrestling with.”
In turn, the drawings of Victoria/Alexis Creek-based artist Cat Fink show her transplantation from place to place.
“These drawings are grounded in my personal experience of transience over the past seven years, and in my family’s long history of migration and multi-centred lives,” said Fink in her artist’s statement. “I move from place to place depending on the seasons. The place where I live right now has no address or two different addresses, depending on who you talk to.”
A graduate of the Victoria College of Art, Fink has been an artist, storyteller, and shape shifter all her life, drawing from still life which she constructs, combining reality and imagination.
She works in mixed media, using pastel, charcoal, graphite, coloured pencil, and acrylic on watercolour and printer’s paper incorporating original text.
Her inspiration and subject matter are inspired by life experiences, which include her Tibetan Buddhist practice and multi-centred family heritage of Scandinavian, French Canadian, and Métis.
Fink has shown her work in solo and groups shows, winning both juror’s choice and purchase awards. She has received education and residency awards from the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation and from the Banff Centre, and her drawings have been published as magazine covers and illustrations.
Both exhibitions, along with work by new North Okanagan Artist Alternative member Rosanna Marmont, open with a reception Saturday at 7 p.m. at Gallery Vertigo, downtown Vernon. Admission is by donation.
