Gary Pearson: The Origins of the Romantic Sensibility

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Gary Pearson, "Sunrise," 2017

watercolour on paper, 15" x 20"

An opening will be held on the evening of Thursday March 1st, from 6-8pm.

 In her book review/essay on Richard Holmes latest memoir This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer, Ruth Scurr describes the origins of the Romantic sensibility as being ‘[…] the experiment in living and writing that was, and is, a break for freedom from social customs that constrain the human spirit.’ Romanticism proper is understood to have begun in the 18th century as a reaction against thematerialism and rationalism of the Enlightenment; yet we know, as Scurr points out, that the mood of Romanticism has continued to inflect art, culture, and the human spirit, right into the 21st century. So what one might ask, is this mood? What initiates the romantic impulse and the romantic response, and what are the signs of the romantic sensibility? The very word romantic is both conflated and deflated by its repetitive usage. That the word romantic might be said to be both useless and indispensable could very well conceptually align with, the “romantic sensibility”. 

Gary Pearson’s exhibition, The Origins of the Romantic Sensibility accepts the philosophical conundrum that attempts to define its multiple meanings and the connotations it may proffer, moreover it relishes in it, as his artwork relies on the imagination, on experimentation, observation, and speculation. 

The exhibition will include works on paper and canvasses, produced in 2017-18. The art works are various in subject matter, style, color, and manner of execution, and directly and indirectly reference notions of the romantic sensibility. 

About Gary Pearson 

Okanagan-based artist Gary Pearson paints a cast of characters and scenes that reflect his interest in the transitional nature of life itself. Using subdued colours that evoke an atmosphere of melancholic nostalgia, his portrayal of the everyday is rooted in his dispassionate and detached observation of contemporary society. Urban spaces such as cafes, bars, hotel lobbies and city parks are presented as generic and unremarkable, apt backdrops for the mundane moments unfolding for the characters on his canvases. Executed in a purposefully crude and repetitive style, his subjects are deliberately unspectacular, and reminiscent of a casual snapshot. 

Gary Pearson is an Associate Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna. He received his M.A. from the University of Saskatchewan and his B.F.A. from the University of Victoria. Pearson is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting and video. He has been exhibiting internationally since 1983. His work in video includes experimental and documentary genres, and he is also an author who has written for several art journals including Border Crossings and Sculpture Magazine. He is the recipient of the International Studio Award at P.S.1/MoMA New York and the 1991 VIVA award. 

Gary Pearson’s last solo exhibition at the Winsor Gallery was in the fall of 2014 when he presented “Turn Back, Detour, Go On”. His most recent solo exhibition, titled, “Gary Pearson: Short Fictions”, is at the Kelowna Art Gallery January 19 – March 18, and is accompanied by a substantial publication with critical examinations of the artists work by exhibition curator Liz Wylie, Aaron Peck, Michael Turner, and Ihor Holubizky.  Pearson is also included in the exhibition Living, Building, Thinking: art and expressionism opening March 2nd at the Vancouver Art Gallery.