By Erin Moore
What do bold, half-naked women, firey red arrows and panels of bright blue and yellow have in common?
They’re all features of a Gallery 101 art show looking at the quality of painting in art.
Face Value, the latest exhibit at 236 Nepean St., features works by Daniel Sharp, Eliza Griffiths and Carmen Ruscheinsky.
The idea behind Face Value is for people to see the talent and technique that goes into creating a painting, and then go deeper to examine its meaning, guest curator Anne Grace says.
At first glance, it appears the three artists featured at Face Value have nothing in common. But Grace says that although the artists are creating very different images, their approaches to painting are very similar.
“These works all show the seductive quality of painting,” she says. “There is a luscious feeling of the painting.”
Another reason for this grouping of artists is that they are all from the Ottawa area.
Ruscheinsky’s work is a combination of the abstract and the real. She layers various scarlet arrows and other images, such as a hand and a penis, all pointing in the same direction, in her work Send Me.
At first glance, the work appears to be a jumble of colour, but upon closer inspection each image in the painting is clearly seen.
Sharp’s work can only be described as abstract. The panels of colour in each of his works seem to swim in a melting pot of blue and yellow squares.
In contrast to Ruscheinsky and Sharp, Griffiths’ work is realistic. Her paintings seem to be photographs of people’s lives at their most intimate.
Each painting depicts a scene in which a couple appears to be in conflict. The women are half naked, the men battered and bruised.
Griffiths says showing her work at Face Value is a refreshing experience because it invites her audience to examine her talent and her artistic process first and then the content of her paintings.
“When people look at my work they only see the content and don’t look at the work that went into the painting,” Griffiths says.
The work that goes into Griffiths’ paintings involves choosing what colours of make-up her characters will wear, as well as the realism of her artistic technique.
Griffiths says she wants people to look at the drama that is unfolding in her work.
“My hope would be that people would look at Face Value and then be drawn to go further,” she says. “I want people to use my paintings to make their own story.”
Griffiths says her paintings depict the raw images of the human experience, evoking such emotions as desire, intimacy and human need.
Griffiths says she agrees with Grace that there is a strength and intensity revealed in all of the paintings at Face Value.
“It’s almost a show of what you can do with paint and materials,” she says.
“I feel it’s an odd mix,” says patron Joe Blades. “The three artists are very different in what they’re trying to do. It’s interesting.”
Face Value runs until Dec. 4.