The last time I wrote about Lorraine Gilbert her work was in two shows at once, at the National Gallery and SAW Gallery. Now Gilbert is in three shows at once, two at the Ottawa Art Gallery and one at City Hall Art Gallery.
Largest at the OAG is Heart of the Moment, a group exhibition pulled from the permanent collection to mark the gallery’s 25th anniversary. Gilbert is among more than two dozen Ottawa-area artists with works in the show.
Highlights include Frank Shebageget’s Beaver, a giant mobile made of hundreds of tiny, wooden bush planes. Catherine Richards’ Curiousity Cabinet invites you inside to sit. Close the doors and your cell phone will not work, which is a rare and precious moment in today’s world. Richards, clearly prescient, made it in 1993.
There’s Katherine Knight’s photo Gael, of a young women in white socks and light skirt incongruously posed in a rocky field during a gale. Evergon’s Ramba Mama is comparatively G-rated for his work, but it’ll still stop you in your tracks.
As for Gilbert, she’s centre stage in Natural Motif, a dual show with Natasha Mazurka in which both artists were inspired by works of the Group of Seven from the gallery’s Firestone Collection.
Gilbert’s centrepiece is a huge, panoramic photograph of the small town of Bancroft on the border of Algonquin Park. Commerce is dwarfed by the park’s vast horizon, but for how long?
Mazurka has for several years been painting onto canvas the ornate patterns she finds in nature and vintage textiles. Cultivation, the largest work I’ve seen by her, is a subtle study in greens, and it’s like being immersed in a softly-lighted glade. It gets my vote as her greatest work to date.
In the next room are a selection of paintings by members of the Group of Seven, including Lismer, Harris and others.
At the City hall gallery, Gilbert’s in dual show with Christopher Varady-Szabo. “The exhibition, Arbor vitae, presents the juxtaposed and overlapping visions of two artists, in their common impulse to give trees a face and even a soul,” says the invitation. I was not able to see the exhibition before filing this column. Abor vitae continues to April 7.
Natural Motif continues to March 17. Heart of the Moment continues to April 7.
“Cultivation” (oil on canvas, four by six feet) by Natasha Mazurka at Ottawa Art Gallery.
“Study from Eagle’s Nest, Drive-Through” ( pigment on canvas, 30.48 x 38.1 cm), by Lorraine Gilbert at Ottawa Art Gallery.
