IAN RAWLINSON
Saskatoon Artist Ian Rawlinson explores a seemingly mundane subject in his paintings: suburban neighborhoods at night. Rawlinson’s luminous paintings take us to backyard vantage points, from which we see the shadows of after-dark punctuated by intense pools of window or streetlights.
Like inkblots, the scenes evoke myriad emotions and psychological connections. What is distancing and alienating to one viewer might be warm and inviting to another. A sense of anonymity might as easily be a sense of belonging. Mysterious, ominous, voyeuristic? Or peaceful, homey and familiar? The power of these works resides in their ambiguity and mute testimony.
A sense of order and unity, experienced during daylight, gives way at night to a degree of uncertainty and apprehension”.
George Moppet (in his notes from a 2001 Mendel Art Gallery show).
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