Painting The Lens, An Archive of Process

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(photo courtesy of University of Regina)

With a culture of image making that shows no signs of slowing down production, this painting project focuses on the subject of the camera. The camera as object was initially chosen because of the sheer abundance of them in the artist’s life and in the lives of his friends, colleagues, students past and present. Growing up in Regina and picking up his first camera at 12 years old, these works reflect back to his first experiments in filmmaking using 8mm film cameras with his childhood friends. Over his long career, Saul has worked across many forms and formats, from 16mm feature dramas, animations and ultra low budget processes, to processing film in his bathtub.

With 456 painted works in the exhibition, this typology of cameras include a breadth of different examples of what constitutes a “camera”: consumer and professional video, 8mm and super 8 film, 16mm motion picture film camera, medium and large format, 35mm film, toys, Lego, cameras made from aluminum cans, candles molded in the shape as a camera, all painted with a solid coloured ground. Quoting the artist: “the background is left without detail because, right from the start, I wanted people to look at the camera and not to think about what the camera is looking at. Cameras naturally create narratives so if we see a camera pointing at something, then it is that "something" that is important. I wanted the camera to be the focus.”

Cameras are a tool used to capture aesthetic or emotional moments of personal meaning. They are typically designed with an audience in mind, if they will be handheld, used on a tripod, as toys for small hands, etc. In this instance, they also function as objects that can be lent and borrowed as models to be painted. The exchange became an important aspect to the project, reinforcing Saul’s relationship and connection to the lender. Painting cameras began in earnest in 2018, but by the time of Covid protocols of March of 2020, the future of the project looked to be in peril as borrowing new “models” was becoming increasingly difficult to acquire. Again from the artist: “Especially during the summer of 2020, the borrowing of cameras was often a very important exchange in my week. People would come to my deck and we'd share a beverage from appropriate distances and talk. It was that summer that I realized how important that personal exchange was. People, sometimes old friends or students, sometimes nearly complete strangers, would want to tell me about why the camera they brought was important to them.

The cameras had life and personality.” Gerald Saul is a Regina-based filmmaker, educator, curator and writer who studied filmmaking at the University of Regina and later earned an MFA in film production from York University, Toronto. In 2016, an immersive exhibition of his work and films, Anecdotal Evidence: The Work of Gerald Saul, was mounted at the Art Gallery of Regina with a text by Regina based writer Ken Wilson. Key film works include Wheat Soup (1987), Life is Like Lint (1999), 25 Short Films In and About Saskatchewan (1999) and the Toxic cycle (2003) as well as hundreds of experimental and animated shorts. Now in his twenty sixth year as professor of film production at the U of R, Saul continues to find cameras alluring as playthings, as tools for discovery, and as both creators and capturers of memories.

Join us to celebrate this exhibition at the artist’s reception on Saturday, May 10 at 2:00PM.