Like the Back of My Hand

add to outlook add to google calendar remind me

Tuesday, September 1st, 2015
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Suzo Hickey paints the West Coast urban landscape – the streets of Prince Rupert, where she grew up, and the neighbourhood of East Vancouver, where she lives now. This work is a reference to her cultural history, recognizing her antecedents as a Canadian painter, experiencing the joy of manipulating paint in this landscape.

Suzo is interested in how human meaning shows in the landscape and how painting makes it possible to see that meaning. She says, “We get comfortable with power lines and ordinary houses in less-than-picturesque communities, and this might be where we see ourselves most clearly. When I looked more closely at what was around me, I saw its importance and its beauty.” Tourists are not visiting these streets, but this is where people live. There are no iconic buildings in Suzo’s paintings and no landmarks.

By using layers of light and weather, Suzo builds landscapes over complex underpaintings of shape and colour. Even when meaning is buried, it casts a shadow.

Suzo Hickey is a painter and multidisciplinary artist. Born in 1959, she migrated from coast (Prince Rupert) to desert (Kamloops) before settling in Vancouver in 1991. She graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1994, and has exhibited around BC and the US on themes of urban landscapes, queer mothering, namecalling, narrative and death in the family.

SPONSORED by Penny + Roger Gosselin

OPENING RECEPTION + ARTIST TALK
Thursday August 13, 6:30 pm