KATHY BRADSHAW: Outside Inside
Reception: Saturday, October 31, 1PM - 4PM, by appointment. Please call or email to arrange a visit.
October 31 - November 12, 2020
Art Placement is pleased to present this debut exhibition by Kathy Bradshaw at the gallery. Bradshaw is a Saskatoon-based artist who works with a range of subjects in oil and encaustic. Since completing a BFA with great distinction at the University of Saskatchewan in 2005, she has continued to enrich her practice through self-directed workshops with local and international artists, artist mentorships, retreats, and solo and group exhibitions across Canada. Bradshaw has won several awards for her landscape work and animal portraiture and is currently represented by galleries across the country, in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan. Her paintings can be found in collections throughout Canada and internationally.

Expressive mark-making, colour, texture, and light all play powerful roles in Bradshaw's art. She favors oil for its buttery texture and juicy strokes and encaustic for its unpredictable and mysterious nature. Using a layered approach, she adds further richness, history, and content to her highly-textured luminous works using oil sticks, charcoal, pastels, inks, tar, shellac and gold leaf.

Most of Bradshaw’s paintings are inspired by her travels in Canada and abroad with a current emphasis on the power of space in the northern landscape and animal portraiture. Equally fascinated and haunted by the vastness of the prairies and the solitude of the forest, she strives to convey the landscape as a form of escape and a means to spiritual growth and well-being. Similarly seduced by animal forms for their emotional and symbolic connections, she strives to capture their "inner landscapes" through gaze and gesture. Whether portraiture, landscape or still life, Bradshaw's works are united by her sensitive observation, her emotional response to the subject before her, and a deep passion for painting.

Artist Statement

Outside Inside explores sense of place through landscape and portraiture.

Since the initial COVID shutdown, I have looked more heavily to my surroundings for joy, escape, and inspiration, and what I have found through numerous walks, country drives, and a couple of camping trips is a greater appreciation for home and a land that is often overlooked and underestimated. We are rolling fields, sweeping grasslands, big skies, northern lakes, boreal forests, and a land of immense beauty and solitude, and this body of work is meant to celebrate that through expressive colour, texture, and mark-making.

Similarly, the portraits included in this exhibition explore “inner landscapes”; specifically, the wonder, the mystery, the longing, and the pride one feels towards one’s surroundings. These portraits are metaphors for that sense of place.

Finally, Outside Inside refers to my use of painting surfaces. Since the COVID shutdown, I have taken the opportunity to experiment further with encaustic (made with prairie beeswax) on weathered barnwood and rusted metal often found on abandoned farms, and have incorporated these surfaces into the mix as a nod to our prairie roots and simpler times.

What is outside is also inside.

-Kathy

Artist Meet & Greet Events

Saturday, October 31st and Saturday, November 7th

Kathy Bradshaw will be in the gallery for an artist meet-and-greet to open the exhibition on Saturday, October 31st from 1PM to 4PM, and again on Saturday, November 7th from 1PM to 4PM. To safely control the number of people in the space, visits to the gallery on these Saturday afternoons will be by appointment only. Please call 306-664-3385 ext. 2 during regular hours or email gallery@artplacement.com to book your appointment to tour the exhibition and meet the artist. The gallery is open during our normal hours of operation and no appointment is necessary to view the exhibition at any other time (please note: we will be closed on Wednesday, November 11th for Remembrance Day). Masks are mandatory, as of November 6, 2020.

Installation images: