Neil Peter Dyck and Lisa Johnson: Landmarks

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Left: Neil Peter Dyck, Under Rivers (Detail), 2016

Right: Lisa Johnson, Traces, Iceland (Detail), 2016

Landmarks opens March 3 at 7:00 PM at Gurevich Fine Art.

Neil Peter Dyck and Lisa Johnson's  exhibition Landmarks, traces the open landscapes of the Canadian prairies to the ancient hills of Iceland. While their work depicts varying locations, the common element is that each artist captures the inner intensity of their landscape.

Neil Peter Dyck’s detailed paintings take us across the vast, open Canadian prairies to the rocky peaks of the West coast. Landscapes and locations where Dyck’s inspiration reverberates, juxtaposed together on his painted wood panels within layers upon layers of paint. Dyck’s dream-like, fragmented compositions are anchored in the silent observation of his own surroundings. The resulting documentation of living where he has — the west coast of British Columbia, Southern Manitoba, Winnipeg and all those places traveled in between. Built by the process of augmenting, reducing and concealing abstract forms, Dyck’s developed an expressive freedom, with calculated restraint. A multilayered execution of taping, cutting, painting and then repeating the process. The result, a body of work with incredible depth.

- Neil Peter Dyck

Lisa Johnson’s work enquires into space and movement within the context of landscape painting. Drawing inspiration from on-location studies to develop large studio works, her paintings weave geographic, corporeal, and abstract sensibilities through layers of atmospheric grounds and gestural mark-making. Her work speaks to the passage of time over an evolving landscape painted with spirit and musicality.

Recently, her travels took her to Iceland in addition to her usual places of inspiration in North-eastern Ontario. While pre-Cambrian geology shaped the Canadian Shield millions of years ago, in Iceland primordial forces are in full view — bubbling lava, steaming fumaroles, waterfalls, glaciers and active volcanoes. Here nature is at its most elemental, volatile and dangerous.

How geography becomes embedded in the psyche fascinates Johnson. Working in an improvisational way, fragments of experience emerge from the subconscious. For Johnson paint is a force of nature in and of itself, creating poetic worlds that speak to the relationship between the artist and the land.

- Lisa Johnson