"Forever"
Carl Schlademan, "Forever," 2003, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 30".
CARL SCHLADEMAN
By Jill Sawyer
The voluptuous flowers that Carl Schlademan has been capturing on canvas recently don’t come from anywhere near his Regina studio. Instead, he travels regularly to the northern California city of San Jose to paint his large-scale floating florals – magnolias, water lilies and lotus blossoms. The paper-whiteness of each flower is set off by jade greenery and still water, in sharp contrast to Schlademan’s other best-known series, his clusters of autumn-coloured pears. Preferring to work in acrylics, his portfolio is also stocked with landscapes, many of them showing the sweep of the southern Saskatchewan prairie, or the crisp edges of city scenes set off in the foreground by suggestions of trees. The artist will also debut work soon that he completed during a retreat with five other artists at the Columbia Icefields. Schlademan’s work is widely collected, and can be found in the West at galleries including Pacif’ic Gallery in Saskatoon, Regina’s Assiniboia Gallery, Canada House Gallery in Banff, Hambleton Galleries in Kelowna and Rendez-vous Gallery in Vancouver. See his work March 27 to April 4, 2004 at Gainsborough Galleries in Calgary.