>>REVIEW
LEST WE FORGET &
WITH EMBOLDENED BRUSH
Runs until March 4
Triangle Gallery
Two exhibitions at The Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts prove that the elusive process of memory can be both sobering and soothing. Lest We Forget: Canadian Designers on War and With Emboldened Brush: The Spirited Watercolour Art of Leo Bushman are shows where world history and a life of creativity form the underpinnings of a walk through time.
Lest We Forget occupies the main level of the gallery. Curated by Alison Miyauchi, the exhibition is comprised of posters created by 25 Canadian designers. Using the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a starting point, Miyauchi asked each designer to make a poster that features the subject of war, antiwar or peace.
The result is a body of work that highlights the considerable talent of this group of artists, who have produced, on the whole, strong, simple and often powerful designs. For example, Peace Not War by Karen Brown depicts an atomic bomb with poppies sprouting from its tail, employing a symbolism that is as direct as it is effective.
Some of the posters take on a more personal tone. Lest We Forget by Terry Gallagher features a black-and-white photo of two uniformed men, one with his arm swung over the other. A hole in the photograph has obliterated the face of one of the young soldiers, and at the bottom of the photo is the caption, "Not all of our friends came home."
"My father served in World War II," writes the designer in an accompanying text. "He was part of a RAF Bomber Squadron stationed in the Middle East. This is a photo from his wartime album. He would tell us stories about his friends and the crazy things they would do – like flying live turkeys from England to their base for Christmas celebrations. One got the sense that these were not part of their approved duties. He never spoke about the horrors of war. He would just say, if asked, that some of his friends didn’t come home."
In the upstairs section of the gallery, the theme of remembrance shifts from war to an individual artist with the Bushman exhibition. Bushman, an educator and collector as well as a painter, died last August in his Calgary home at the age of 88. He was a citizen of the world who eventually settled in this city, where he taught in the fine arts faculty of the University of Calgary until 1982.
Well known for his love of children’s art, Bushman was also a talented watercolourist. In this tribute exhibition of his works – most of which have been lent by the Bushman family or the U of C – we can see just how capable Bushman was at interpreting landscapes as diverse as the forests of Alberta and the deserts of California.
In watercolour painting, the "less is more" adage is often a good guideline and Bushman learned this lesson long ago, using the water-based paint in a restrained manner. Perhaps influenced by his years living in Japan and Korea, where he worked in arts education, Bushman’s subtle impressions of the North American landscape also deserve to be remembered. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.