The featured exhibit runs November 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: November 2 at 2:00 pm

 

Artist: Peter Field

 

Artist Statement:

Magic Squares is the title of a painting by one of my heroes, Paul Klee. I fell in love with his work as a teenager. Looking at his paintings was the first time I really got abstract art and started to love it. I tried to copy them (“this looks easy”) and was deeply humbled by the experience. I realized I had a long road ahead before I’d be able to mix colours with anything approaching the subtlety that he did. Fifty years later I’m still learning, and loving the process of mixing colour.

 

Peter Field has worked as a painter, sculptor, theatre designer, prop maker, scenic painter and festival artist. His paintings are in the collections of The Alberta Art Foundation, The Canada Council, The Art Gallery of Alberta, The Edmonton Public Library, The Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre and many private collections. He has had one man shows at The Art Gallery of Alberta, The Works Gallery, The Citadel Theatre, The Vancouver East Cultural Centre among others. He has been part of group shows at The Art Gallery of Alberta, Presentation House, Latitude 53, The Royal Alberta Museum and The Works.

The featured exhibit runs October 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: October 3 at 5:30 pm

 

Artist: Wilfred Kozub

 

Artist Statement:

I constantly refresh myself by going back and forth between creating visual art and music, and each time I return from one to the other, I am revitalized and creative. Regardless of the medium that I’m into at the time, my process is similar – I love to experiment. I value awareness and always wonder how one thing in our world affects another. My curiosity leads me to discover new ideas and to find fresh connections. I believe my identity, eclectic style, and enthusiasm for the world are best expressed through my art.

 

Wilfred Kozub is an Edmonton visual artist who has been exhibiting his vibrant paintings since1995. A self-taught painter, he is best known for his spirited, imaginative works that are alive with colour and motion and express fascination and wonder at the beauty found all around him … flora and fauna in his own backyard, the skies, the weather, and even architecture. There is an element of decoration found in his work, as well as a curiosity about the unknown. Working mainly in acrylics and gouache, Wilfred creates art that crosses boundaries between reality and mystery.

 

Kozub’s own photographs provide the resource material for the unique connections that express surprising ideas in his paintings. His art identity is found in the eclectic sensibilities that unite his vision in style, colour, and kinetic activity. The work reflects a positive outlook that makes the viewer feel … good. Wilfred Kozub’s art is represented in the Alberta Collection (AFA).

 

In addition to his visual art activities, Kozub pursues a parallel career as a songwriter and recording artist. Since 1984, Kozub has released a dozen albums of his engaging art-pop music on his own Zönik Records label. His paintings and photography can be seen in the graphics of the vinyl and CD albums by Wilfred N & the Grown Men and Wilfred Kozub solo releases. The sound of Wilfred N & the Grown Men is well-known locally; the youthful, melodic songs are frequently heard on radio stations such as CKUA, CJSR and CBC.

 

Wilfred Kozub’s music is colourful as much as his visual art is alive with melody.

 

The featured exhibit runs September 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: September 5 at 5:30 pm

 

Artist: Alison Fleming

 

Artist Statement:

These paintings depict places in Edmonton and other cities that have struck me for one reason or another: colour, lighting, shadow, or particularly beautiful kind of decrepitude. Keeping my eyes peeled for something interesting makes every walk in every city an adventure.

 

Alison Fleming grew up in Winnipeg and now lives in Edmonton. Her paintings are in private collections across Canada, as well as with the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The Toronto Public Library, and Wedge Curatorial Projects.

 

The featured exhibit runs August 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: August 3 at 2:00 pm

 

Artist: Neil McClelland

 

Artist Statement:

These paintings take as their starting point my childhood home. This place where I grew up becomes an imagined world, acting as a metaphor for the belonging that we seek within nature and the cosmos. My process involves layering fragments of visual experience, memory and imagination to create in-between places that are not so much about representing a real place but rather distilling it in a search for meaning. As in much of my work, there is recognition of the tensions between the uncertainties of our times and the possibilities for re-enchantment with the world and a planetary consciousness. I seek to capture a sense of uneasiness and precariousness but also a sense of awe and wonder at the interconnectedness of everything: land and sky, earth and cosmos, night and day, and past/present/future. Painting processes that emphasize ambiguity, motion, and transformation work to convey a visceral and unmoored sense of place and time and to suggest what is simultaneously familiar but strange. In this dream-like world, time bends and blurs, land shifts and moves, the uncanny and the everyday collide, and anything might happen. Night skies, or skies in which time is indeterminate, imbue this imagined place with a sense of magnitude, an opening of the cosmos, a space to contemplate. I understand the places in my paintings as filled with possibilities, defamiliarized but somewhere where we might find something of ourselves and our world.

 

Originally from Quebec, Neil McClelland divides his time between his home and studio in Edmonton, Alberta and Victoria, BC. He received his MFA from the University of Victoria in 2014, and he currently teaches visual arts for Thompson Rivers University. Neil has had solo and group exhibitions in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, and he is a 2016 and 2020 grantee of the internationally prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. His paintings are in collections including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Colart Collection.

 

The featured exhibit runs July 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: July 8 at 5:00 pm

 

Artist: Sid Trajkovski

 

 

Artist Statement:

This series of collages explores the disorientation felt when confronting one’s unmasked personality during the onset of the COVID lockdown. Using dynamically scanned images of faces in motion, the work prompts reflection on the outcomes of shedding societal facades. It ultimately poses the uncomfortable question: who do we become when no one is observing us?”

 

Sid Trajkovski is an interdisciplinary artist and creator based in amiskwacîwâskahika, a.k.a Edmonton. Over the past seven years, Sid has delved into the world of collage, utilizing art as a vehicle for introspection and comprehension. Sid’s pieces encourage viewers to contemplate alternate realities where traditional limitations fade. Through psychedelic expression, Sid prompts others to embark on a journey of self-reflection and exploration, utilizing creativity to surpass the boundaries of everyday reality.

The featured exhibit runs June 1 – 30, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: June 1 at 2:00 pm

 

Artist: Laurel Westlund

 

 

Artist Statement:

FALCONET is an installation of silkscreens that playfully depict a landscape of recurring nightmares. Arising from an unconscious mind confronted with uncertainties and nebulous fears, these skeletal ‘memento mori’ figures forge their way through the battles unphased. In this dreamlike realm they remind us to confront the fear of our inevitable mortality and find the beauty in the present moment. Drawing from Medieval imagery, the prints are created using hand-cut stencils screened onto wood, cut out and layered together. A collage of bold linework, saturated colours, and hints of lurid fluorescent hues- hidden layers emerge into glowing night scenes that only appear in the dark.

 

Laurel Westlund is an Edmonton-based visual artist with a background in Printmaking and Classics from the University of Alberta. With a love of history, and a touch of the absurd, her work uses themes of crisis to explore the nature of fear in our lives.

The featured exhibit runs May 1 – 31, 2024 in Metro Gallery in the Garneau Theatre lobby.⁠

 

Artist Reception: May 2 at 5:00 pm

 

Artist: Heather Noel

 

 

Artist Statement:
It started out of necessity, the need to use up some free 4×5 film without access to a large format camera. Fashioned from a dollar store cardboard box, a pop can, and some black tape, the pinhole camera captures images unmediated by lenses and digital sensors. Technological control is traded for playful acceptance, the security of precision is exchanged for the thrill of chance. Long exposure times invite motion blur and mystery artifacts, destabilizing the illusion of permanence. The single-photo nature of the camera provides welcome relief from the crippling infinity of contemporary image generation. Final images are digitally refined through cropping, retouching, dodging and burning, while still preserving pleasant imperfections.

 

Heather Noel was raised by herding dogs, children’s literature, and early 90s television on the farthest edge of Atlantic Canada. She graduated from NAIT in 2006 with a diploma in Photographic Technology, just as celluloid film was falling out of popularity, and cellphone cameras were on the rise. In the decades since, she has been slowly accumulating a collection of film cameras and maintaining a personal artistic practice. She has worked with super 8mm and 16mm motion picture film to make her own short films, and contributed to various local independent film projects. She is also obsessively dedicated to her full-time job as Metro Cinema’s programming manager.