Melanie Authier

Distance fails the clairvoyant eye

March 26, 2022 – April 23, 2022

“My studio practice begins with an improvisational approach guided by self-imposed, evolving parameters. Working without source imagery or preliminary sketches, my paintings are abstract conduits of movement that each develop as a conversation between myself and the unfolding motions on the surface of the canvas.

I strive to develop scenarios wherein art-historical referents can co-exist in one imaginary space, engaging with beauty and the sublime, object and landscape, all interwoven without hierarchy.

While the work draws inspiration from geography and the biosphere, and its spatial passages are recollective of landscape, these non-representational paintings are meant to present a psychological state. The intention of my pictorial language is to bridge the dichotomy between the human and the natural, resisting extractive modalities that consider nature as a passive subject to be “used” by the artist. Through a metaphorical approach to landscape, situated in perceptual experience, I try to respond to the elusive, the ephemeral, and the undefinable, creating alternate, psychogeographic records that emerge from the residue of past genres, histories, and methodologies. I’m exploring the moment when a painting begins to describe an unfathomable, intangible quality of space, a world beyond its own material weight and formal limits.”

I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.