Waterkeeper Art Auction | Paul Béliveau

February 7, 2012 | Corus Quay, Toronto

What: Waterkeeper Gala Dinner & Art Auction, presented by RBC
When: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 (Reception begins 6:00 pm)
Where: Corus Quay, Toronto (Queens Quay & Jarvis)

Help Lake Ontario Waterkeeper celebrate our 10th Anniversary by joining co-hosts Edward Burtynsky and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at our inaugural fundraising gala. There will be a special musical presentation by Gord Downie.

Spend an unforgettable evening with the leaders who are helping to create a swimmable, drinkable, fishable world. Our friends and supporters include Joseph Boyden (Giller Prize winning author), Wade Davis (National Geographic explorer), Denise Donlon (media executive and television host), Gord Downie (musician and author), Dr. Joe MacInnis (physician-scientist), Kevin Lowe (NHL all-star), and Karen Percy Lowe (Olympic medallist).

A collection of specially-curated works of art from some of your favourite artists will be auctioned off. Values range from $2000 – $35,000. Our collection includes works by Edward Burtynsky, Paul Béliveau, Barbara Cole, and Charles Pachter.

A healthy, prosperous future depends on clean drinking water and a sustainable food supply. With your help, the inaugural Waterkeeper Gala will raise $250,000 to restore and protect Lake Ontario.

It is possible to create a swimmable, drinkable, fishable future. It is not possible to do it without you. Whether you purchase a work of art in our auction or simply make a donation online, your contribution helps secure clean water for 9-million people. Thank you.

Available prints :

Hybris and Némésis Exhibitions | Dominique Gaucher

January 21 to March 5, 2012

The works in this exhibition originate, in the words of the artist, in pools of colours which slowly spread and intermingle, becoming vast, uneven expanses through a difficult to control dynamic of fluids. With this series of new paintings, Dominique Gaucher abandons his usual desire to control, foresee and plan everything, reacting instead to what occurs on the canvas. Open to this loss of control, he thus forces himself at times to follow to the very end the paths he wanders down. To take liberties and to experience the unpredictable. This two-part exhibition thus shows the two sides of an approach which moves back and forth between excessiveness—blind ambition, insolence—and a reprimand of this excessiveness—divine vengeance which reveals human frailty in the face of the power of the elements. Hence the title of the exhibition, Hybris et Némésis.

Paradoxically, it is in the large paintings being shown at Expression that the humility demanded by Nemesis takes on meaning: the fear and recognition of outsized forces. And it is in the smallest works on paper being shown at Plein sud that the excesses of the goddess Hybris—fallacy, folly, arrogance—are expressed.

Plein sud and Expression are presenting the two parts of the exhibition Hybris et Némésis simultaneously.

Hybris is being shown in Longueuil, from January 21 to February 25, 2012
Opening on Saturday, January 21, to 12pm at 2pm

Némésis is being shown in St. Hyacinthe, from January 21 to March 5, 2012
Opening on Saturday, January 21, to 3pm at 5pm
Presentation by Dominique Gaucher on Saturday, January 21, at 4pm

Available work :

KEVIN SONMOR AT THE SHERBROOKE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

January 21 to March 25, 2012

“New Old Masters” is an expression coined by Donald Kuspit, the distinguished New York art critic, to describe contemporary figurative painters who reinterpret or even expropriate the work of the Old Masters. Kevin Sonmor’s works, who lives in Cowansville and work in the region, could well answer this description.

The work of Kevin Sonmor is nourished by ambiguities. Specifically, he matches bits of classical subjects – flowers, fruits, still lives, horses – with a more contemporary technique, a spontaneous brush-stroke, a texture modern and fluid, with a powerful colorization. Sonmor brings time to a halt, freeze a moment, tells a story or a narrative, in a space where a strange sadness or a vivid emotion is expressed by a deep comprehension of painting itself, by the exploration of texture, between a kind of reality and an evident theatricality.

Kevin Sonmor was born in Lacombe, Alberta, in 1959. He was educated at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary and the Banff Centre, Alberta. He received his Masters Degree in Fine Art from Concordia University, Quebec. Sonmor’s paintings have been exhibited across Canada and the United States, and are represented in many important public and corporate collections. Currently, Kevin maintains a studio in Dunham, Quebec.