Lines of Communication The paintings of Margaret Glew
We exist in a world we think we know yet are continually confounded by our own ignorance. Reality remains an unknowable enigma that taunts us as we pass through life to death. Margaret Glew’s abstractions remind one of these great anomalies.
Her paintings bristle with an austere energy that manifests in horizontals and verticals, like a Calvinistic expression of faith. Colours are kept to an efficient minimum and she favours warm, dissonant combinations. Unlike complementary colours, which attract, dissonant pairings push away from one another, establishing visual tension.
There is a sense that these paintings are born of the earth and project a sense of time, or an unfolding. The forms seem to grow to inhabit the picture plane as if the whole rectangle or square is in a process of spawning smaller versions. The artist restrains her personal touch and idiosyncrasy to imbue them with this sense of becoming. Veils of colour part, revealing submerged rectangular areas from previous moments. It is as if one is looking through a transparent mist into the past. Often this haze is like molten lava, in red or orange tones, threatening to engulf the viewer.
She uses primarily one-inch brushes on 4 to 5 foot surfaces, which allow her to create airy expanses without a particularity of mark and also act as a crude means of delineation so the lines are not decorative. Certain symbols like crosses and circles pepper the paintings as if trying to locate points within the flux or contain comprehension, if just for a moment. In ‘Firewalking’ the X’s seem animated, telling a story, like little people walking a tightrope and falling into oblivion. The symbols become infused with life and attract viewer fantasy even as they remain totally abstract. Aesthetically the black lines and symbols serve to establish a rhythmic pattern of accents and bind the composition.
Certain paintings seem to thrive on intrigue, like ‘Dance with the Bones’, which has a labyrinthine maze of graphic indications that invite viewers to follow the clues, to engage with the unknown. A work like ‘Somewhere Lions Still Move’ travels through an interior space, with a rare use of diagonals, imparting a sense of perspective and depth. One is always aware of the movement from point to point or state to state.
There is a feminine, enveloping, quality to this work so there are no insistent individual projections but rather a series of visual incidents that activate the entire surface. In a caring society, the nurturing, symbiotic nature allows for death as part of the cycle of life. These paintings express the matter of fact-ness of existence, with all its harsh reality. The images conjure up desert vistas, or rock faces inscribed with lines that try to understand or explain the inchoate. However, they never become too insistent or remonstrative.
In the psychological paradigm, the paintings emerge from Glew’s subconscious. She follows her impulses as honestly as possible, in an effort to give form to chaos. The process is reminiscent of Surrealist automatic writing. Much abstraction is removed from this interpretation and locates itself in the so-called aesthetic purity of colour, line and the creation of an autonomous object. One senses something else in Glew’s work, perhaps a closer connection with the nature of reality. Her paintings seem to express a journey through life to a spiritual understanding.
Ashley Johnson Toronto, 2009
Ashley Johnson is a South African artist and writer currently based in Toronto. He co-founded Dasart, an artists’ collective making socialist art that strives to rethink the connection between humanity and environment. In Toronto he is represented by Headbones Gallery. As a writer he was the art critic for Business Day, a national daily newspaper in South Africa. From 2005 he has been writing for magazines like Canadian Art. He holds a BAFA (art) degree from the University of Natal, South Africa.
Margaret Glew lives & paints in Toronto. Using a personal language of form and gesture, she makes intuitive, layered abstracts that investigate natural cycles and the transitory nature of the material world.
She has been exhibiting her work in Toronto and environs since 1989, and is represented in Toronto by Engine Gallery. Her work was exhibited at the Toronto International Art Fair in each of the last four years, and in July, 2007, she was one of eight Canadian artists chosen to exhibit in “Parca, Canada in New York”, at the 511 Gallery in Chelsea. Her work is in a number of public and corporate collections, including the City of Toronto Archives, the City of Scarborough Art Collection, and the Richmond Hill Public Library.
She is an active member of the Toronto arts community, and she presently serves on the board of directors of the John B. Aird Gallery. She was for four years a member of the Loop Gallery artist collective, and was also a member of PVAC/Gallery 1313, where she served on the board and on the program committee.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 Engine Gallery, Toronto, “Lines of Communication” 2008 Cell Gallery, Gallery 1313, Toronto, “Close Encounters” Yorkminster Park Gallery, Toronto, “Silence and Slow Time” 2007 Engine Gallery, Toronto, “Shifting Borders” 2006 Loop Gallery, Toronto, “Traces” 2005 Engine Gallery, Toronto, “Winter Fire” 2004 Cell Gallery, Gallery 1313, Toronto, “Marking Time” Praxis Gallery, Toronto, “Animal, Vegetable or Mineral” Loop Gallery, Toronto “Ordinary Angels” 2002 Cedar Ridge Gallery, Scarborough 1996 York University Faculty Club, Toronto 1994 Cedar Ridge Gallery, Scarborough 1991 Arcadia Gallery, Toronto 1990 Cornwall Regional Art Gallery, Cornwall, Ontario
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2009 John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, “Septette” 2007 511 Gallery, Chelsea, New York, “PARCA, Canada in New York” 2006 Gallery 1313, Toronto, “Earthworks” (two person) 2005 Engine Gallery, Toronto 2004 Engine Gallery, Toronto, “Engine” Parts Gallery, Toronto Gallery 1313, Toronto, “Post Minimalism” Gallery 1313, Toronto, “Abstraction” 2003 Gallery 1313, Toronto, “The Wet Show” Coop Gallery, Toronto 2002 J. B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, “Capable of Transformation” (three person) 2001 Cedar Ridge Gallery, Scarborough 1996 Consilium Gallery, Scarborough 1993 J. B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, (two person) Cedar Ridge Gallery, Scarborough 1989 Homer Watson Gallery, Kitchener, Ontario
AWARDS
2003 Best in show, Praxis Gallery, “Landscape” Best in show, Society of Canadian Artists Juried Exhibition 2000 Best in show, Visual Arts Mississauga Juried Exhibition 1996 Mayor’s award, Scarborough Arts Council Juried Exhibition 1993 Best in show, Marine Museum Juried Exhibition Mayor’s award, Visual Art Centre, Bowmanville, Ontario
GRANTS
2006, 2001, 1996 Exhibition Assistance Grant, Ontario Arts Council
COLLECTIONS
City of Scarborough Sunnybrook Regional Health Centre City of Toronto Archives Toronto Historical Board Dominion Ventures Limited Transamerica Life Richmond Hill Public Library
PRESS
Catalogue essay, Ashley Johnson, “Lines of Communication” Canadian House and Home, Dec. 2009, image Sofa Deco, April 2008. Image. Artery, Spring 2005, volume 10, issue 1. Review of ‘Winter Fire”. The Toronto Star, February 17, 2005. Image. Artery, Spring 2004, volume 9, issue 2. Review of “Ordinary Angels” Canadian House and Home, December 2004. Images. Magazine d’Art, fall, 2004. Image. Sunday Sun, May 26, 2000, “Of Moose and More, Portrait of an Artist”. Article, images.
