This Spring we are pleased to be hosting the inaugural book launch for Claude Simard’s recently published book, Inspiration. Warmly written and beautifully illustrated, it tells the story of the people, places and experiences that have influenced him during his more than 30 year career as a painter.

Claude will be in attendance for the event on Saturday, June 11^th and with him will be several new works for sale. For anybody interested in Claude’s work this is a fantastic opportunity and shouldn’t be missed. See you soon!

The response was overwhelming. Titled, ‘Lust’ the piece was one of the most talked about works in the show.  Despite it’s ‘mature’ subject matter, it seemed to hit a chord with everyone young and old.  Greg’s adaptation of the genre could best be described as playfully scandalous. His motivation is not one leaning toward the sardonic aspects of the genre but rather to explore the rich narrative powers made possible by daring and risqué enconters. ‘For better or worse, [these] characters were part of my life as much as the elevators, dusty gravel roads and endless fields of golden wheat’, says Greg. ‘Scandal passion and transgressions of the law conjure scenes of questionable individuals who live by their own rules. To invent and to bring their world to life is a challenge both in terms of composition and story telling’.

Masters Gallery Ltd. held a solo show for Greg’s Pulp series in the fall of 2010 and sold every work in two days. The response has inspired Greg to explore the series further. His latest works may be seen on display from April 1^st to 30^th.

Why are we fascinated by overabundance and the visual richness of extraordinary profusion? In 2004, Chris began a series of works to answer this question. Called ‘Matters of Denial’, it focused on the age-old genre of still life. Cakes, lobster, fish, roasted pig and other spectacularly rich foods, carefully arranged and fore-grounded among opulent and palatial backdrops. At first glance, they are highly illusionistic works whose polish and prowess would be right at home among the works from the Dutch Golden Age at the Rijksmuseum. Yet a closer look reveals, that these seemingly innocuous banquet scenes are far more cunning than any realistic record of fresh food could ever be.

Chris Flodberg, Born and Bread II, 6’ x 5’ oil on canvas

Look closer and everything is disheveled, pushed around, picked through. It is as if a band of thankless, prodigal teenagers tore through each arrangement, despoiling them and taking something here, a bit more there – unconscionably wasteful.  On one hand they are Vanitas scenes, that is works which remind of the fleeting nature of pleasure and its inherent anology to the transience of human mortality. On the other they are visual prods, intended to rouse the viewer to consider his or her own susceptibility to extravagance. The viewer’s first reaction: frustration. How could someone be so blatantly prodigal? Who would do such a thing? Who would have so few manners, so little decency? Profligates!

It has been several years since Chris has returned to the ‘Matters of Denial ‘ series. Yet recently, and fittingly, he could not resist temptation. Using a brush stroke that is as richly laden as the still life objects he represents, Chris has brought to life the very people who would be ‘dining’ at these tables.  In Chris’s painted vision of the world, everything has come to an end. Apocalypse has begun, if that’s what you choose to call it. Though not meant to be understood in a rigidly religious sense, but in terms of human progress. We have taken all we can and the world refuses to supply us with anymore lest we give back.

Chris Flodberg, ‘Hooded Man’ 48″x48″ oil on canvas
Chris’ apocalyptic vision cares little about the narrative of redemption so central to religious traditions. Conversely, it is about how far we are willing to be faithful to our desires. When we look at the faces of Chris’ subjects we look into the eyes of souls who have nothing to lose. In ‘Hooded Man’ we are confronted with a clownish looking figure with a bizarre and camp ornamental headdress. He stares blankly toward us; his expression conveys a trance like preoccupation suggestive of an altered state. In ‘Party Girl’ a beautiful girl catches our eye. With full lips and veiled but deep green eyes, she responds with a haughty and sardonic glare revealing that her appearance is a façade and can be stripped away as quickly as the gossamer veil that covers her eyes.  As a series of works they are the rogues and rogues and sybarites which populate the inhabited world of the ‘Matters of Denial’ works. Like Marc Antony and Cleopatra before the Battle of Actium, they try and dissuade fate  with an excess for sensuousness and luxury, but what they await is a power unwilling to reconcile. They eat, become intoxicated, ravish each other, for what it’s worth, they are wealthy beyond belief and they roam unchecked among a world conscious that they, like it, have come to an end.

Chris’ new series “Inhabitants” may be seen at Masters Gallery Ltd. from March 15-June 25^th. For more information please contact Masters Gallery Ltd., www.mastersgalleryltd.com.

Chris Flodberg, ‘Party Girl’ 4’ x 3.5” oil on canvas

Claude Tousignant 'Untitled, no 36' 1958 gouache on paper 8x10

Jean Paul Riopelle. Paul Emile Borduas. Claude Tousignant. Rita Letendre. Jean Paul Lemieux. Robert Pilot. Clarence Gagnon. These are just a few of the celebrated names whose work will be on offer as of January 13th, 2011, when Masters Gallery opens Quebec Art Through the Ages, an exhibition and sale of important historical and post war Quebec art. The exhibition, coinciding with the Triangle Gallery’s Winter Art Stroll, features a collection of paintings by Quebec artists whose extraordinary work made lasting contributions to Canada’s art history.

For more information or to receive a notification for the show send us your email.

Untitled 1947 watercolour pen and ink 10"x9.5"

A recent acquisition brings to light the opportunities available for collectors looking for reasonably priced and important works of Montreal post war abstraction. Jean Paul Mousseau is perhaps most well known through his public commissions for the Montreal Metro and Quebec Hydro. But Before his large scale work from the 60s, 70s and 80s, Mousseau was a key player in the modernist revolution ushered in by the Montreal Automatistes. ‘Untitled’, 1947 is as good of an example as can be found of works inspired by Mousseau’s crucial commitment to this radical group of Montreal Painters.

THE ARTIST: Born in Montreal in 1927, Jean Paul Mousseau’s work first drew attention in the 1940s through his association with Paul Emile Borduas and the Montreal abstractionists known as les Automatistes. Mousseau was the youngest member of the group whose primary objective was to free art from the perceived constraints of a close-minded establishment. In 1948 Mousseau and 15 others signed the Refus Global or Global Refusal, a collection of essays proposing a new and visionary approach to art and culture.  In the 1950s Mousseau’s sympathies for the Automatistes diminished and he began exhibiting with another Montreal group, the Plasticiens. In the 1960s Mousseau’s experimental nature led him away from painting to explore ceramic, set design, painted fabric and the integration of art and architecture. His interest in the latter earned him a series of commissions for the Montreal Metro and throughout the 1970s and 80s he served as art director for the city’s underground stations where many of his works may be seen today.

THE PAINTING: When Mousseau painted ‘Untitled’ 1947 he was at the height of his powers as an abstract painter. Since his first showing with the Automatistes in 1946, he adopted a surrealist approach in which spontaneous strokes acted as a ‘frame’ for subsequent drawing and coloration. This technique, known as automatism, inspired a series of remarkable small-scale pen and ink works on paper. In spite of his contemporaries, Mousseau resisted the urge to edit out essential aspects of traditional painting; thus, as in ‘Untitled’ 1947, characteristic aspects such as a sense of a horizon line dividing a foreground/background serve as idiosyncratic features. Though rare and limited in number, works like ‘Untitled” 1947 have come to define Mousseau’s contribution to abstract painting in Canada. It’s daring blend of historic and modern, intuitive sense of balance and design and currently underrepresented value, make Untitled 1947 a model prospect for the savvy collector.

Tea For Two, 1995 acrylic on canvas 24"x30

Janet Mitchell (1912-1998) has been much celebrated for her imaginative use of the watercolour medium. For over fifty years she relied on it to produce celebrated visions of the people and places of her native Calgary. Faithful as she was to watercolour, a recent acquisition, Tea For Two, reminds us she was also very partial to another medium.

Janet began to use acrylic paints as early as the 1960s shortly after it was introduced to artists as a viable alternative to oils. Throughout her career she turned repeatedly to acrylic for her larger compositions and many of these became defining images of her career –  the painting illustrated on the cover of Peggy Armstrong’s book Janet Mitchell: Life and Art is painted with acrylic. The problem was that compared to watercolour, acrylic was expensive and rarely was it within the budget for struggling artists – Janet once remarked to Peter Ohler that had it been more affordable she would have used it much more fequently.

The painting we acquired this week, Tea For Two, marks a final and potent stage of Janet’s exploration with acrylic. Painted in 1995 it depicts two figures seated idly at an outdoor cafe letting the hustle bustle of the Calgary street pass them by. The two dogs waiting patiently at their masters feet recall Janet’s own faithful companion, a scruffy little Scotty dog she named Heg.

Tea for Two hangs in the gallery this week, a rare opportunity for a collector looking for a compelling example of Janet’s contribution to 20th century art in Calgary and to the expressive powers of the acrylic medium.

This Saturday, Oct 28th bronze artist Cameron Douglas will be joining us in the gallery. Travelling from his home in Nelson, BC, Cameron will be bringing several new works, including his latest creation ‘Takakkaw Falls’ which has yet to be cast and will be on display in clay form.

With more than thirty years of working in the plastic arts, Cameron will also carry with him a wealth of experience and wisdom in the art of bronze making which he is more than willing to share. Since his days as a fine arts student at Red Deer College, and the David Thompson University in Nelson, he has worked with foundries in Calgary, Canmore and Nelson, producing an impressive body of work whose numbers are likely in the hundreds. Many of these works, we are proud to say, have found homes through Masters, a relationship that has resulted in an extensive exhibition history and a major following of Cameron’s work among Calgary collectors.

The main reason collectors have continued to turn their attention to Cameron’s work is that so few artists are able to capture the poetics of the human figure in such compelling terms. Cameron’s work rests on a delicate balance of historical and modern concerns over figurative representation. It blends a classical understanding of the proportions of the body with a modernist ambition for the expressive manipulation of form and subject. The result is an irresistible vision of the harmony grace and even playfulness of the  human form.

One of the pieces on display, Lonely Cloud (illustrated above) is a pronounced testament to this vision. Inspired by a poem of the same name by the English Romanticist William Wordsworth, Cameron makes his ‘healthy’ proportioned subject seem to float before our eyes hovering elegantly above a bed of Daffodils. In another, Cameron interprets the shapes of Canmore’s Three Sisters as a warming narrative of sisterly compassion. Other works on display include Family Totem, Stubby and Chinook.

Cameron will be in attendance from 10am to 5pm, Saturday Oct. 28^th. See you at the gallery!