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“This body of work is driven by my fascination with light, object design and spatial relationships. My hope is to connect with my audience through an appreciation of mundane objects in the spaces of our everyday lives. I am attempting to create an assemblage of ideas that imbue modernity / antiquity, industry / handmade and the properties of light and endeavor to bridge these in essence, by renovating paint”. ~ Sara Robichaud

Special thanks to exhibition sponsor the Kensington Riverside Inn

“The paintings in this collection grew from my love of books and reading...... then the fantasies took over. As the canvases became larger, so did the brushes I needed to use, and the paintings took on new personalities. Their stories are mine, and maybe yours too.” ~ Audrey Mabee

A graduate of the Alberta College of Art & Design, Gerard Yunker has been one of the city’s leading commercial and advertising photographers for over twenty years.

The series EURO displays Yunker’s truly artistic nature and pursuit of personal work that evokes the highly tuned eye of the artist behind the camera.  Yunker’s sensitive lens captures a frozen moment in time while evoking a dream-like tone.  EURO embraces the contradictions of the continent itself, on one hand flashing before the viewer at a rapid pace and at other times lingering dreamily in warm patches of light on ancient shadowy streets.

"Continuing my investigation of the human form, I’ve recently paid closer attention to the works and techniques of the old masters. This has resulted in a shift of palette, further experimentation in layering and a strong inclination to find the perfect flesh tone. Also included in this show are a number of botanical paintings. For me the flower paintings relate very much to the figures in that they possess similar qualities such as anatomy, eroticism, strength and delicacy. I also find them interesting subject matter for their ephemeral quality, somehow enabling us to find composure in a transient world."

- Mychael Maier

From the infamous to the inexplicable: despots, televangelists, sex symbols, cult leaders, talk show hosts, hypnotists, billionaires, and flying squirrels, we are powerless to resist their charms!

Come face to face with Peter Frampton, Tammy Faye Bakker, Reverend Moon, Geraldo Rivera, Silvio Berlusconi, Kim Jong Il, Tony Robbins, and many other ideals of perfection.

A Post-Pop show of miscellaneous megalomaniacs at AXIS Contemporary Art

Maguy CARPENTIER's artistic practice exploits the theme of reminiscence. Touched by her own family's moments of loss and grieving, she proposes links that emerge between memories that are sometimes imprecise and those from her subconscious. She is fascinated by the phenomena of 'déjà vu' and reconstructs her memory by using old photos of her family. In essence, she works in collaboration with her ancestors who originally took the photos and seeks to revive them in her paintings. Humanistic and familial feelings transmitted over time take place in different ways, like the inescapable filiations of ones ancestry. Internal spaces composed of fragments open the door to reminiscence, bringing to one's memory what was once forgotten or even too present to be understood.

It's been around 10 years that I paint the same view of a mountain and a castle. It has been part of my every day life to sit and contemplate them.

I know the view is real and at the same time it seems so unreal. It is always the same, yet it is always different. It might sound strange, but it is looking at this view, when it doesn't matter, what I am, have or know, and it is there, where I believe I'll understand something, someday...

My work tends to have a form of an object. A couple of years ago on the other side there were texts. This time there are birds cast in bronze. The newest paintings are oil on black granite, a material, which also makes them more object like.

Jesús Martinez, an art critic wrote about the last show in Barcelona:

"Her contemplative work is calm, and it returns us to the silence of the nature, to the solitude, to the mystery never reached in the distance. It is the insistent regard during those ten years that she has observed the same subject, which turns it out as a virtuous persistence, in a reflection on the infinite variations of the same.

She knows it is necessary to paint from deepest of the soul, but concentrating in the essential."

My first recollection of feeling 'Canadian' was as a young child. I took a train from Vancouver to Ottawa. It was aboard that train over a period of many days that the size and diversity of this country came to form an image in my mind. That Canadian feeling disappeared for many years until my early thirties where I found myself shoveling snow at minus 30 in Alberta. Rather than feeling defeated by cold I was empowered by a sense of National Pride, that indeed it was the challenge of a cold winter which makes us Canadian, and without hesitation proceeded to clear the snow from each house on the street, Gordon Lightfoot's 'Alberta Bound' on repeat in my mind.

'O-Canada' celebrates our Canadian identity, our accomplishments, heroes, landmarks and guilty pleasures.

"...from far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee."

Timothy Wilson Hoey

The Rodeo and the West is a series of photographs made at small town Rodeos including: Galisteo, NM; Faith, SD; Belen, NM and includes a glimpse of the western range land. It is an unpretentious observation of a romanticized west, looking behind the hype and myth surrounding this now highly commercialized 'sport'.

Photographed with a 100 year old Brownie Style box camera, fitted with a Polaroid back and using Polaroid 4x5 type 55 p/n film, the series emphasizes the rough and tumble, gritty side of this super macho arena, where women are allowed to excel only in a single event, Barrel Racing, that requires both speed and extraordinary 'horsemanship'. The language used behind the scenes and in the chutes reflects the battle to control, then tame and conquer 'wild' beasts, a metaphor for the subjugation of nature and exudes a brutal sexuality.

To create the prints, he made traditional silver gelatin prints in the darkroom and then scanned the images and worked on them in Photoshop. The final prints are produced on Epson Ultra Smooth Fine Art paper using an Epson Ultrachrome ink jet printer.

Donald Woodman graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1969 with a BS degree in architecture along with an extensive background in photography. He has worked with architectural photographer Ezra Stoller; educator and photographer Minor White; painter Agnes Martin.

He has created several major series of black and white photographs using 4x5 Polaroid positive/negative film. Mr. Woodman's creative work has been supported by the Polaroid Corporation, which purchased and exhibited many of these images in conjunction with their prestigious, Polaroid Collection Program. His work is also included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; the Museum of Art and History, Fribourg, Switzerland; the Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM; The Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM; the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Butler Art Institute, Youngstown, OH; and many private collections.

For more than 35 years Donald Woodman has pursued a very active career as a photographer. His work has been included in publications and exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and he has worked with a variety of subject matter, using all camera formats, but he specializes in large format photography. In addition to his fine art photography, Mr. Woodman is an accomplished commercial photographer who has worked on seven books and he is a contributor to magazines including Time Magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and New York Newsday. His photographic work shows his ability to meld his broad knowledge of traditional photographic techniques with the new advances in digital photography. As a teacher he has brought this unique understanding of photography to the students at several universities around the United States.

Three years after her first successful Calgary exhibition, Kimberley French's follow-up solo exhibition, entitled 'surface revisited,' will be on display at Axis Contemporary Art Gallery downtown, from June 5 - 26, 2009. The opening reception, with French in attendance, will be Friday, June 5 at 7:00pm.

'surface revisited' consists of a series of 12 large photographs (8 are 36" x 56", 4 are 28" x 42") of nature, urban landscapes and interiors. As with her previous exhibition, all of the images were created in camera and printed using the Giclée process. Giclée (pronounced Gee'clay) consists of creating a digital scan of the original photograph and printing it using minute droplets of archival ink on artists' canvas.

Each work is printed to the exact specifications of the artist and is limited to an edition of 5.

Kimberley French is one of Canada's leading still photographers. Her images from movie sets have been seen around the world. Among her notable work were all images from the acclaimed "Brokeback Mountain" and "The Assassination of Jesse James." She is currently working in Vancouver on "New Moon," the second film in the Twilight saga.

A native of Gander, Newfoundland, French moved to Calgary in 2003 after growing up in British Columbia in the Kootenay region and in Vancouver. Her passion for photography was ignited at the age of seven when her grandmother gave her an Instamatic camera.
French loves the art of photography. Her personal work, which is emphatically on display in this exhibition, gives her the freedom to display her own visions, differing from her feature film work, where she specializes in capturing the visions of world-class directors.

French says, "I began making the photographs I call 'surface' five years ago and this body of work continues to evolve. Within cityscapes and landscapes, I attempt to capture that elusive light, the ethereal image that strikes a visceral cord in me. The inclusion of movement is a crucial element in my work, emphasizing vivid overall effects rather than details using techniques such as blur, reflection and large grain. The images do not look like traditional photographs; they are rather like paintings. My tools are both 35mm film and digital cameras."

I grew up in Calgary and Drumheller, Alberta, but I was born 22 years later when I moved to my current home on the west coast of British Columbia. These places, their often divergent but equally inspiring geographies and cultures, have become woven, fused, and often even clashed like titans throughout my life. Finally, they have come to inform and serve as a mechanism to extrude the work in this current exhibition.

This new body of abstract collage and mixed media work is a personal exploration that encompasses some larger universal concepts. Without trying to define the specific connections, the processes and the images in this exhibition approach a big picture that is attached to, but not defined by, concepts of love, empowerment, identity, culture, spirituality, humor and gentleness. They also explore the illusions of “belief” and “difference”, the evil engendered by the belief in difference, the power of fear and shame, stories, memory, becoming, opening to all that we are, connections and sameness, healing both in terms of self and cultures,… and gratitude. All of that is here somewhere between the layers of paint and paper and process. As usual, I owe a debt of thanks to the era of modernity and my painterly heroes, Twombly of course, and this time Rauschenberg in particular.

"My art is my own ambition-my choice. There is no right or wrong way to interpreting my paintings, which are non representational or abstract. Painting for me is the essence of things I have seen, experienced and learned. In the process of my paintings I need to posses a keen sense of my own direction and identity."

- Seka Owen, RCA

Over the past twenty five years Seka Owen has earned the reputation as one of Western Canada’s most important and prolific abstract painters. A Calgary based painter, Owen creates graceful compositions with assemblages of bright colours that dance over subtly stained grounds. Her work pocesses an expressive quality and depth of emotion that transcends the canvas. In 2005 Seka Owen was elected into membership to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

"The ephemeral experience of nature, and the ephemeral nature of experience."

- Chris Bowman, 2009

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Prairie landscapes are never comprehended all at once. It’s the absorption of multiple moments and details that draw me to paint. The sense of awe that energizes the moment, the powerful vastness, subtleties of softness, the hidden life force, are qualities that keep me attuned to the prairie.

Where I live - the downtown core of a large city - is a place of contrasts, a world of multiple shifting layers created and inhabited predominantly by humans.

The clustered core of the city creates a strong visual impact with kaleidescopic variations of shape, form, texture and colour. The view from my high-rise flat inspires in me a kind of 3-dimensional feeling of floating among the buildings; they are not towering above me nor seen from a distance, but rather we exist together somewhere between earth and sky. They, like I - like most people - have a deliberate external veneer which conceals the activity within.

Ryan, Tim and Phil live communally and work collaboratively in their studio home. After a couple years experience, trials and errors the three have a sharper focus, which includes a fine balance between select designs known as "studio series", custom sculpture\installation and fine art. Collaborative works share aesthetics contributed by the three artists and are also informed by the characteristics of their glass studio.

Our attraction to glass is drawn from the natural beauty of glass. Glass as a medium is unique and working with the raw, molten material has limitless possibilities. The process is exciting, team oriented, physically demanding, requires precise coordination and demands your mind's complete presence; it is a richly rewarding medium to work with.

Through the magic of staged photography, sets, props and costumes, the artists have recreated the epic story of Jeremy's ancestor. "Flight of Fancy Series Two" tells the extraordinary tale of an artist's grandfather, Jacek Jereski. While operating a blast furnace at the Dominion Bridge foundry in Calgary, Jereski secretly conducted tests and painstakingly built a flight suit and jet pack.

By a stroke of luck, Jeremy discovered old letters and sketches from his grandfather's notebook. This information helped him gain insight into his grandfather's ambitions. As a child, the grandfather dreamed of flying at great speeds, using the power of technology. In his younger days, Jereski studied early rocketry and jet propulsion theories. Jereski's family and friends dismissed him as nothing more than a dreamer, and kept his story a secret. Eyewitness accounts reveal that Jereski attained a significant altitude for an undetermined period of time.

- Jeremy Jeresky
- Photography by Drew Ritchie

"My work has been called, ‘evocative' and I think that is an accurate description. By dissecting away notions of identity, culture, beliefs, place, etc., I can arrive at a depiction of the human body, rather than directly representing it. The result of this is dissection is a quasi-observation: a depiction of humankind-in-general through the simulacrum of one-in-particular."

- Mike Binzer

Many people see the tumultuous storms in my paintings. For me, it is not so much about the storm, but more the effects of light within them. By painting a backdrop of a wind swept sky and water, one can truly see the radiance of light. These paintings are an inward journey where one can explore deeper, more complex realms within their own experiences.

- Norah

These thirteen pieces are the result of months of sketching and studies that have accumulated in my sketchbooks. After reviewing, reworking and editing the many drawings I began to see a recurring theme between them, namely the tropics, the sea, divers, reefs, and fish. I began to produce the series for a show with Axis.

As they were being developed, I found that not only my subject matter had shifted to other visual elements, but I felt that there was a new way of expression and experimentation. My usual color schemes had shifted and changed, and the painting style became looser, yet more mature. My own artistic "aha" moment, if you will.

Acuatica & Tropicalia have been a pivotal point in my work so far, and a further development towards finding a better way of expression and technical finesse.

Maybe there IS something to this painting business after all...

- Hugo

I work structurally and impulsively, creating a conflict of depth with a flat picture plain. I roughly hew out environments inspired by physical communities, motion, colour and contemporary urban & rural culture. My artistic practise which incorporates painting, drawing, installation and photography is motivated primarily by the creative process.

I want the process to be readable in my paintings, a breadcrumb trail that reveals the story of the individual work. I believe art to be an event. Painting is more about the act of painting than what is painted. I paint both abstractly and realistically, moving from one to the other, switching when I get bored with one to the other. Individual projects are inspired by personal experience and curiosity and built through impulse, accident and play.

Simon Flemming

"Each painting in this collection is a "toast to life". It is about finding joy in many of the things we take for granted and the celebration of the simple pleasures of life.

The stylized guileless figures and quiet, almost drab colours are consistent with the "every-day-ness" of our lives. The poppy coloured dancing boots in most of the paintings are about hope—and fun of course, both essential to life."

Audrey Mabee

Audrey Mabee is an alumnus of the Alberta College of Art and Design, and a former Acting President of the institution. She served as a member of the Board of Governors for six years, and was the first alumni president.

Her work focuses on people…people dancing, eating, making music and generally enjoying life in a lyrical world. Her careful use of bright colours and thoughtful attention to negative spaces creates a joyful interplay of rhythms and patterns on the canvas.

Audrey has exhibited her work in San Francisco CA, Vancouver BC, and Calgary, AB and is a part of many impressive private and corporate collections around the world.

These paintings are based on semi-abstract drawings of the landscape made while driving my automobile. Feeling frustrated by the limitation of having to drive and draw simultaneously, I quickly enlisted friends to drive so that I could paint in the passenger seat (or strapped to the roof of my car as it is driven through the desert).

I was immediately struck by how difficult it was to draw and paint the landscape as I moved through it. How do I draw a tree when I see it for only a second? How do I paint a car that is speeding past me? How do I represent a building that grows as I approach it?

Is it even possible to describe such a dynamic visual experience with a pencil or paintbrush? What an incredible challenge! When I think about my art practice, my heartbeat quickens with great excitement!

This is a completely new way of approaching the tradition of landscape painting! Rather than standing still with my easel by the side of a babbling creek, I am being hurtled along the asphalt, desperately plucking details out of the passing environment before they disappear from view.

"I am concerned with beauty, with what I think is the obvious fact that it is food for the soul. I think that to dismiss this idea simply because someone has thought it before is seriously short sighted. Beauty’s downfall is its commonness, and it is precisely because beauty is so common that we should be paying attention. It is always here for us if we will slow ourselves down enough to see it. Because beauty is everywhere and I am an omnivore – tasting a little bit of this and a lot more of that – feasting - on the endless buffet - I am nourished endlessly".

Lori Lukasewich

AXIS contemporary art presents the highly anticipated exhibition of New York-based figurative artist Tim Okamura and collaboration with Calgary graffiti artist The Kidbelo.

Tim Okamura — Born in Edmonton, Canada, painter Tim Okamura earned a B.F.A. with Distinction at the ACAD in Calgary before moving to New York City where he graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in 1993. Okamura has had several solo exhibitions in New York City and Canada, and has had his work chosen for inclusion in several prominent group exhibitions, including "After Matisse/Picasso" at the Museum of Modern Art., as well as being selected five times to appear in the BP Portrait Awards Exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery. Okamura - a recipient of the 2004 Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts - has also had his paintings featured in several films and his art is on display in the permanent collections at the Toronto Congress Center, The Hotel Arts in Calgary, Canada, and Standard Chartered Bank in London, England; and in the private collections of Uma Thurman, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson (The Roots), director Ben Younger, and actors Bryan Greenberg, Vanessa Marcil, Annabella Sciorra, and Ethan Hawke.

The Kidbelo — Growing up in a small town The Kidbelo (David Brunning) found he had a talent for drawing at an early age. Always drawing letters and words, the Kidbelo evolved into what he calls a graffiti writer naturally and considers words and letters to be his muse, his inspiration and the framework for his art. In 1999 he moved to Calgary and joined a larger community of graffiti artists. The Kidbelo's clients include Holt Renfrew, Adidas, Henry Singer Fashion Group, Red Point Media, Snatch Rock n Roll Lounge and Art Central. His work was prominently featured in the highly successful "Art Under Pressure" Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Calgary in 2005.

Dr. Melanie Lerner is an Acupuncturist and Doctor of Oriental Medicine who has been in private practice since 1978. In the medical field she has lectured, taught, researched, and offered service work throughout the world.

As an artist, she has been active since 1992 with the creation of her art form called Acuart. Her unique body of work attempts to portray, through each distinct piece, a visual expression for various acupuncture points found on the body. The use of needles in each sheet of wonderfully textured hand-made paper further carries this theme. Furthermore, every piece is named for a specific acupuncture point and on the back of each frame are discussions for the associated location, indications and traditional medical functions for that point. Each singular piece offers the viewer a possible theme or concept for healing, particularly through art.

Dr. Lerner's Acuart has been shown worldwide in galleries, juried shows, museum exhibitions, and retail stores. She has won multiple awards and has been privileged with many 'one-woman' shows.

"I prefer that my work not be described as 'landscape'. Rather, it is meant to be interpreted as an abstract arrangement of forms. My goal is to abstractly express what is on my mind, but to also capture the soul. My hope is that the painting will speak to you on a primal level, and that you too will not only see the trees the way that I do, but also feel them the way that I do.

Striving to depict the discovery of harmony amidst the apparent intricacies and complexities of life, that becomes the constant goal of each painting."

Chris Bowman, 2007

Greg Gerla is a resident of Calgary, Canada. After graduating from the Alberta College of Art & Design he has professionally pursued photography for eleven years. His work has taken him from the frozen north of Inuvik to the fashion Mecca of Miami. He was recently presented with the Kenneth R. Wilson Award for Outstanding Photography as well a First Prize for Best Photographic Series by the 19th Annual Western Magazine awards. Greg has a passion for the creative process and strives to produce evocative and striking images.

Glimpse is Gerla's latest exhibition of personal work that captures the sensual forms of the body touched by light in the most fleeting and transient of moments. Using traditional methods and hand printed in the darkroom, these stunning toned silverprint photographs are both cinematic and ephemeral; like a breath suspended in time.

A show of fine art prints featuring recent work by: Alden Alfon, Jayson Fuerstenberg, Edwin Herrenschmidt,James Jensen, Eveline Kolijn & Lee A. McKay

"The varying moods of nature are the source of my inspiration. By observing I create recognizable but imaginary landscapes that translate images and impressions into shapes and color."

"An artist friend and I where talking about our process and I mentioned another artist I know had made a painting a day for a year, missing four days out of that year. With that we challenged each other to a painting a day for a month, and on reflection decided to make the challenge 28 days. I made up a set of "rules" which where as follows.

All the works would be the same size 8 x 12. Each work was to be started and finished during my waking hours. I did prime the canvas the day before to save drying time. Each work would include a digital image. I would not use black paint. Rather than think of these works as finished paintings I considered them as preparation for a new body of work. I had thought that I might find new territory to explore in paint and found that the space I was in still had something to offer. I did notice that some days I had no idea of what I might do that day and during the day something would either show itself or I would hear something of interest that suggested a direction for that day's painting.

The average time was about 2 ½ hours, some days it was easy, some days not. The two paintings from before the project are an indication of a direction I will be exploring in the near future, I find the idea of collage and objects interesting. The two from after the project have much to do with the discoveries I made during the 28 days. I tend to work without an agenda, but I did find myself thinking about issues around ecology and global warming during the project and I think some of that might be found in the work. I'm still thinking about what I may have gotten from the project and know that I will not be doing this again anytime soon."

— Dave Casey, April, 2007

Martinho Correia's artwork results from rigorous, directed observation of the human form using only the artist's eyes, wits, and knowledge. His artwork is both classical and realist - a fantastic, systematic, and radical example of art that is a new image, from new images as experienced by the artist. We should note the very long academic tradition of art that that implies, and how such artworks take quite a long time to create. Thus it may be most accurate for us to recognize that Correia's work results from thousands of studies of his models, many visual exposures combined into one coherent new image. Such age-old painting traditions allow Correia's work to be astoundingly realistic, making every muscle, structure and texture of the human form's representation lead to a distinct and delicate psychology. By focusing on the perceptual, Correia's work makes it possible for us to feel that we are immediately in the presence of the portrait, the figure, and the humanity of each individual in his art.

— Prof. Gregory Scheckler
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
North Adams MA, USA

Saturday afternoon, April 7th, Martinho will present the lecture A New Florentine Renaissance: the Rebirth of Traditional Academies. Call the gallery for details at 262-3356.

Born in Swatow, China, 1949. Lap was educated in Hong Kong at the Ling Hai Art School. There he studied both Eastern and Western painting. He also apprenticed at his father's pottery shop, specializing in Tang Dynasty reproductions. Lap immigrated to Canada in 1970, and graduated from the Alberta College of Art in 1974, majoring in ceramics. In 1975, Lap formed Twin Wood Pottery and also began teaching at the Mount Royal College , he has subsequently taught at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and the University of Calgary, in the Continuing Education Departments. Lap has held numerous exhibitions, both solo and group, nationally and internationally. His work embraces the Taoist tradition.

At sunrise on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 I put on a mountain climbing harness, and secured myself to the roof of my blue BMW. For two and half hours I painted the desert landscape with oil paints on linen panels, while a friend drove my car at speeds up to 75 miles per hour (120kmph) on the highway, near Joshua Tree National Park, two hours east of Los Angeles, California.

On the afternoon of Saturday, May 10th, 2006, I left my painting studio near downtown Los Angeles, and drove north along the 110 Freeway (formerly known as the Arroyo Seco Parkway) until I arrived in Pasadena. I made a number of drawings of the landscape during my short trip. Later that day I used these drawings as inspiration to make a large oil painting.

On the surface, my paintings depict land or seascapes; however on a closer investigation they articulate thoughts and emotions within oneself and others. It is as if these expressions were projected onto an interior land or seascape. While nature is the departure point, the viewer using the painting as a vantage point, can explore deeper, more complex realms within their own experiences.

Ron Kostyniuk was born in Wakaw, Saskatchewan in 1941. From 1959 to 1963, he attended the Faculties of Arts and Science and Education at the University of Saskatchewan and from 1967 to 1969, the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta. He received a Master of Science degree in 1970 and Master of Fine Arts degree in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin. His work with the Constructed Relief dates from 1963 and with the initiation of the Neo-Constructive direction in 1983, his art has continued to evolve in this mode to the present. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Art at the University of Calgary.

"Frequently one finds in Thavonsouk's art a feeling of softness, achieved visually through undefined edges, and the merging of subject and background into seemingly single planes of space. The artist comments on his need to counteract the many acts of violence around the world through the creation of 'softness' on the picture plane. It is this undercurrent of feeling the need to create places of contemplation, peace, tranquility and humility that defines Thavonsouk's practice."

Catherine Mastin - Senior Curator of Art, Glenbow Museum

One of Portugal's greatest contemporary artists and art educators, residing on the Faculty of Art at Porto University in Portugal. Laranjo has influenced many followers and is considered to have his own school of art.

Courtesy of:
Fonseca Macedo Gallery, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal
Sala Maior Gallery, Porto, Portugal
Dumaresq Gallery, Recife, Brazil

Special support from Instituto Camoes, Portugal

Photographing nature and the human body is about the essentials, it is about going back to basics. It is about recognizing the beauty of what is immediate in our bodies, and in its environment.

After years of experimentation with colour and space, stirred memories and forgotten secrets, my work has taken on a distinctive style. The experiments go on, the learning continues, the style evolves.

The ordinary subjects of people making music, dancing, eating, drinking, cycling and swimming are transformed into fanciful images. Birds, fish cats and fruit invariably creep, unannounced into many paintings.

Currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, Tim Okamura is a native of Edmonton, and graduated from ACAD in 1991, before moving to New York to obtain his MFA at the School of Visual Arts. Paintings from his "Urban Portrait" series have been seen in several films including "School of Rock" (Jack Black), "Pieces of April" (Katie Holmes), and prominently featured most recently in "Prime" (Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep). Okamura's work will also be seen in the upcoming "The Hottest State" (written and directed by Ethan Hawke).

Maighead a chur is Irish for 'to bury magnets'. I was told as a child that if you bury magnets in your backyard your compass will always point home. I still follow this advice, and in many ways attempt to transfer this 'grounding' to my work. In our often transient lives I hope these works act as a focal point, with enough gravity to allow the viewer to rest.

landing on the
ground
and just as I settle into
a spot
I am quickly wisked away
and spread thin
over existing colours
and shapes
sliding along edges
and eventually evaporating

What have I left behind?
Hopefully an experience of
freedom, play and creativity
that enlightens you!

Edwin Herrenschmidt

James Jensen

Alden Alfon

Lee McKay