Sue Rusk Ephemera
Exhibition: May 29 to June 20, 2015
Vernissage: Thursday, May 28 at 6 pm
Artist, Curator, Dancer | An Exchange: Thursday, June 4 at 7 pm
Ephemera, Sue Rusk’s exhibition in the McClure Gallery, includes approximately thirty works created in the artist’s Vermont garden over the last three years. Executed in watercolour, acrylic, charcoal and conté on Mylar and hand-made paper, the works combine the immediacy of spontaneous gesture drawing with the thoughtfulness of long and considered looking.
The subject – flowers – has long held the artist’s attention; she repeatedly returns to the theme. However, the works in Ephemera open up a spacious new ground. Earlier concerns are not so much abandoned as honed towards a visual poetics that speaks of embodied experience, felt truth and a profound awareness of life’s mutability. The artist chose to privilege drawing over painting for its capacity to lay bare. “I wanted to simplify things, to eliminate anything not essential and drawing, which has always been important to me, was what I needed.” As the most elemental of art disciplines - drawing allows Rusk to sustain an immediate experience of and response to her subject. Inherent throughout the series is a feeling of movement, metamorphosis. Nothing is anchored down, rooted. Things tilt, bend, fall, lean, dance; several titles are directly borrowed from dance: En l’air, Dénoument, Plié, Pas de chat. A sense of things about to dissolve or disintegrate - as if the petals are detaching from the bud, the leaves from the stem - echoes throughout the work. Against such a feeling of dissolution and vulnerability, Rusk posits a poetics that repeatedly locates beauty within the cyclical, eternal dance of change. The quick, tremulous, questing lines capture the movement perceived at the heart of nature.
Sue Rusk notes that this body of work is about “how I would like to feel.” Ephemera offers the artist and the viewer a poetic salve to the spirit, an invigorating lack of closure and an intimate communion with the natural world, not in spite of, but through its mutability.
Sue Rusk was born in Montreal. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, France, Brazil, Israel, Spain and in the United States. Her works can be found in many major corporate, public and private collections nationally and internationally.
Sue Rusk taught drawing and painting at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts and developed, directed and taught at the School of Creative Arts for Children in Montreal. She continues to teach art workshops in her Montreal studio.
Exhibition: May 29 to June 20, 2015
Vernissage: Thursday, May 28 at 6 pm
Artist, Curator, Dancer | An Exchange: Thursday, June 4 at 7 pm
Ephemera, Sue Rusk’s exhibition in the McClure Gallery, includes approximately thirty works created in the artist’s Vermont garden over the last three years. Executed in watercolour, acrylic, charcoal and conté on Mylar and hand-made paper, the works combine the immediacy of spontaneous gesture drawing with the thoughtfulness of long and considered looking.
The subject – flowers – has long held the artist’s attention; she repeatedly returns to the theme. However, the works in Ephemera open up a spacious new ground. Earlier concerns are not so much abandoned as honed towards a visual poetics that speaks of embodied experience, felt truth and a profound awareness of life’s mutability. The artist chose to privilege drawing over painting for its capacity to lay bare. “I wanted to simplify things, to eliminate anything not essential and drawing, which has always been important to me, was what I needed.” As the most elemental of art disciplines - drawing allows Rusk to sustain an immediate experience of and response to her subject. Inherent throughout the series is a feeling of movement, metamorphosis. Nothing is anchored down, rooted. Things tilt, bend, fall, lean, dance; several titles are directly borrowed from dance: En l’air, Dénoument, Plié, Pas de chat. A sense of things about to dissolve or disintegrate - as if the petals are detaching from the bud, the leaves from the stem - echoes throughout the work. Against such a feeling of dissolution and vulnerability, Rusk posits a poetics that repeatedly locates beauty within the cyclical, eternal dance of change. The quick, tremulous, questing lines capture the movement perceived at the heart of nature.
Sue Rusk notes that this body of work is about “how I would like to feel.” Ephemera offers the artist and the viewer a poetic salve to the spirit, an invigorating lack of closure and an intimate communion with the natural world, not in spite of, but through its mutability.
Sue Rusk was born in Montreal. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, France, Brazil, Israel, Spain and in the United States. Her works can be found in many major corporate, public and private collections nationally and internationally.
Sue Rusk taught drawing and painting at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts and developed, directed and taught at the School of Creative Arts for Children in Montreal. She continues to teach art workshops in her Montreal studio.
                           
Past Exhibitions: "I am delighted to personally invite you to my one-woman show at MJG Gallery in Toronto, featuring my recent works." Sue Rusk, March 2014 "Traces" by Sue Rusk April 3rd-23, 2014 "This exhibition offers a selection of drawings, paintings and collages worked on over the last several years. A common theme is that of memory and the fragmentary nature of that which is remembered." Sue Rusk lives and works in Montreal, where she has taught drawing and painting since 1975. Rusk has participated in numerous solo exhibitions in Canada and the US. She has been part of countless group shows throughout Europe, Israel, Asia & South America. Sue's work can be found in numerous corporate, public & private collections, nationally & internationally. We look forward to seeing you at the show Feel free to forward this invitation to friends & family MJG Gallery, owned & operated by Mark Gleberzon 1028 Queen Street East, Toronto (416) 923-4031 [email protected] "MJG Gallery" on Facebook & Twitter Wed-Sun, 11-6 or by appointment Artist Statement This exhibition offers a selection of drawings, paintings and collages worked on over the last several years. A common theme is that of memory and the fragmentary nature of that which is remembered. My working process is fluid and peripatetic. I work on several pieces simultaneously, physically moving back and forth between images, adding, taking away, allowing fragments to find resonance, one with the other. I work until something is evoked or recollected. Layers of gestures, marks, erasures interact with colour washes, torn images from earlier paintings, or shreds of personally handmade paper, all of which gradually build towards visual resolution. Thus it is in intervals that the work evolves into meaning through a deeply intuitive process of visual decision-making. This intuitive process is fundamental to my work. It allows for discovery: I create in order to know what I think and feel. Like memory, my imagery is alternately clear and unclear. It moves from abstract assemblage pieces that function as very personal alter-like offerings to the more figurative or expressionistic Chair series. My concern is not to represent what the eye sees however but rather to reveal the complex layered nature of experience and to bring the fragmentary nature of my personal experience into some meaningful, though ephemeral, whole. |
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