Isalos Fine Art

We just spent a few days with family in Ottawa, Ontario for our Christmas break. I suppose it was a pretty normal family Christmas: long days of sitting around and eating, punctuated by movies on a huge-screen television in which the bad guys get plowed-down like they're in a video game.

We did manage to get out and see some art. The National Gallery of Canada would have made the whole trip worthwhile on its own. As expected, we saw a lot of work by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, whose work we've read about, but had never seen. Our first reaction, of course, was 'wow, they're much bigger than the pictures in the books'. Even more inspiring though, was the collection of studies the artists painted on location. Most were about 8" x 10", unframed, oil on panel landscapes. These pieces were done in the wilderness and then carried, often via canoe or pack, back to the studio, the paint still wet. In their studios, the artists would decide which pieces might work well on a larger scale.

 
Making big paintings from little studies done in the field isn't such an uncommon thing, but sometimes the small paintings have at least as much vibrancy as the bigger works that get all the attention. Of course, we notice paintings that are recognizeable from a hundred feet away, and those big paintings  will go for big prices and get plenty of attention. In the museum though, I pulled up a chair and sat looking at the little paintings for quite awhile. It wasn't so different from sitting in our own gallery or at home, where we put paintings up on a ledge to casually admire them and play the 'which one do we want?' game. Well, we wanted a few of them, and anyway, they weren't for sale, unlike these or these. Or these.

We also enjoyed the more recent, Albers-esque color study paintings, and  the contemporary wing, with installations like the trailer (of the 18-wheel variety) made of movie set materials, put together in a room with small doors. And there was the video on a huge screen of a guy standing on a beach with an electric guitar and a couple Marshall stacks playing "Stairway to Heaven" while the waves crashed behind him. I was very curious to find  out if anything more happened... like maybe the tide coming in or something, but it was closing time.

We could have easily spent another day in the museum, but the next day we had our nephew's hockey practice to see, and we visited a town that will remain un-named, which has a reputation as an artsy destination with a bunch of galleries. Unfortunately, the galleries we saw were more of the pine country knick-knack shop variety. Artists' statements tended to include when the artist had been laid-off by the high-tech industry, which gave them the opportunity, finally, to be an artist (which they really had been since the age of three when... etc, etc.). There's nothing wrong with that, of course: it's just not my thing.

This experience, once again, reinforced my appreciation for both artists and the art audience in Deer Isle and Maine in general. We may sometimes take it for granted, but we've got it good here.  I seem to touch upon this theme every time we go away, but hey, it's true. Here's a snowman my nephew Wyatt and I built. That's his dog at his side. Once again this demonstrates... Ok, kidding. Sometimes a snowman is just a snowman.