Barrie Szekely

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Barrie Szekely, “Floater's Dream,” 2019

oil on panel, 22” x 28” (courtesy of the artist)

Abstract art exists along a continuum. Some artists are primarily emotive, engaging our senses through their manipulation of the medium’s formal qualities. Others seem to tug more at the mind, suggesting hidden meanings that entice even as they repel efforts to invoke a narrative. 

Victoria painter Barrie Szekely goes further by incorporating recognizable figurative elements within largely abstract works, holding out the promise of meaning, however evasive.

His lastest oil paintings, on view at Edmonton’s Bugera Matheson Gallery from Feb. 14 to Feb. 28, include natural elements like leaves and sparrows.

In Floater's Dream, for instance, a small bird is poised, belly up, on a circular element filled with multi-coloured patches of colour that are almost map-like in their matte flatness. They occupy an indeterminate space with the painting's other elements, mostly odd patches of colour.

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Barrie Szekely, “Grinder,” 2019

oil on panel, 24” x 20” (courtesy of the artist)

Szekely thinks his strategies respond, in some ways, to the world’s unpredictability and growing complexity, which can leave him experiencing "“indecisiveness and confusion” in daily life.

“When I was young, I had no difficulty changing a motor or transmission in my car,” says Szekely, who has lived in Victoria since 1982 and teaches at the Vancouver Island School of Art. “Now, I don’t know how to do anything.

“I’m not looking for work that has metaphor or direction,” he adds. “I’m trying to make the painting visually complex.” ■

Barrie Szekely’s work is on view at the Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton from Feb. 14 to Feb. 28, 2020.

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