Start Gallery exhibits the works of students and recent graduates from across the country. Here's your chance to learn a little bit more about them...
Yaw Asante
School: OCAD
Favourite Artist: Dali Salvador
Artist Statement:
I just believe, I have come to understand that a good design needs no depiction.
Liz Emerzian
School: OCAD
Favourite Artist: Gustav Klimt
Artist Statement:
I have been studying Illustration at OCAD for four years, and from it I have learned to communicate stories and messages in many different ways. I prefer to communicate my ideas through symbolism, body language, surrealism, and expression. My passion is for communicating and understanding the underlying primal emotions and feelings that most people have by using whimsical, imaginative styles mixed with dark humor to produce works that anyone can relate to. My art tends to tell stories that are all at once beautiful and possibly unsettling, creating a combination of feelings and responses. I like to create art that is mysterious and ambiguous so that the viewer can make up their own story, or come up with multiple possibilities.
https://start-gallery.myshopify.com/collections/liz-emerzian
Janghan Hong
School: Queens University
Favourite Artist: Gustav Klimt
Artist Statement:
I firmly believe that it is the artist's responsibility to record, document, and interpret their contemporary world for the future. I tend to gain inspirations from contemporary, mainstream events and sources. I feel that majority of post- modern art has been so removed form historical contact that the artists are making art for the consumption by other artists. There is a large degree of artistic inbreeding, where are begets are that begets art that begets art. The focus is no longer on the art itself, but on the artist. Whose job is not to produce art, but to explain how their art is relevant.
In few instances when I refer back to the history of art. I am particularly drawn to Art Nouveau, not so much in style, but its purpose as the face of a new century. THe artists involved in the movement believed that they should be involved in every aspect of daily life, even in the marketing of mass-produced goods. I believe that the artists should reach out, rather than wall themselves off from the mainstream community. I wish to create art that is relevant to non-artists. I do realize that in the present culture saturated with mediocre and unrefined media of self-expression of YouTube and Deviantart, it is hard to appeal to the masses with tradition notion of 'fine art'. But as Gustav Klimt once said, "If you can't please everybody, then please a few".
https://start-gallery.myshopify.com/collections/janghan-hong
Betty Zhang
School: OCAD
Favourite Artist: El Bosco
Artist Statement:
if I could change the world into a more colorful, more playful, and more interesting place, I would; but for now I'm just illustrating the world as if it was just so. My life is about creating art for all the things I want people to see, designing, and celebrating a style that is unique. I am like a chameleon, versatile in every situation, adapting my travels and experiences in different backgrounds with my work. I like mixing styles and contrasting mediums, mostly working with oil, paper, and textile. I like the feeling of gliding brush strokes on canvas, as well as the sound of cutting into delicate paper while creating silhouettes. I sense my mediums and they tell me what I should create. For me, art-making is about the feeling that takes over me as I work and the unusual results that I encounter.
I am obsessed with patterns, which can spur from anything in daily life. The texture of something can also inspire me. I like to create images from the heart, and therefore, each piece speaks of something very personal to me, usually they are my reflections on views of humanity and human behavior. The possibilities of the things that go through my mind is endless and to describe all that sound, image, and ideas to others is what I set out to achieve. My work explores the contrast between soft and hard, harsh and environments ever so warm.
https://start-gallery.myshopify.com/collections/betty-zhang
Christel Scott
School: OCAD
Favourite Artist: Depends on the day
Artist Statement:
Materiality and composition are just as important to me as content. I like to build up paint to the point that the subject matter can be somewhat ambiguous, and lend itself to the viewer’s interpretation. At the same time I do not usually work with purely non-objective shapes. I definitely indulge in paint as fetish in these works so the viewer has indulge with me by looking.
https://start-gallery.myshopify.com/collections/christel-scott
Annie Liang
School: University of British Columbia
Favourite Artist: The Group of Seven
Artist Statement:
I begin a piece with a topic in mind. The current topic I am interest in is land distribution. How is land distributed, who gets which parts, what gives one rights to a piece of land, why is there a fight for land? I enjoy working with bright colours as it brings life to the pieces. The land is a living, breathing part of us and it should be respected.
Kalynn Le Blanc
School: OCAD Graduate
Artist Statement:
This body of work deals with representation and interaction with the Canadian Landscape. While Canada boasts the ownership of natural wonders, protected parks and wildlife preserves, the majority of the landscape is predominantly inaccessible, and relatively uniform, simple and repetitive. My work is not about the sublime or dramatic, but the banal; representations of a landscape that is mysterious and hidden, quiet and unending.
I am interested in our distanced relationship with our own land. The sporadic settling of vast nation inevitable constrains our interactions with the 'wilderness'. We live in clusters of urban habitations, leaving a great deal of the land untouched. These places can be difficult to reach, extending over precarious rocks and impassable waters. So in seeking and experiencing these I have the opportunity to portray these places, replicating as specifically as I can.
Having experienced and photographed these places in great detail, I work carefully, and honestly, respectfully representing each element of the scene, to provide a more accurate, honest depiction as opposed to working from memory or source alone. The fleeting moment is captured quickly by camera, but lovingly reproduced in paint. Translating this quick-capture process into paint emphasizes the dedication to the environment, and illustrates that the subject is important to me to share.
https://start-gallery.myshopify.com/collections/kalynn-le-blanc
