Boyd Chubbs – Visits & Visitations
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Visit and Visitation: Since Antiquity I’ve Dreamt of Balance and I carry that dream upon the rough, continuous way. -
The Visitor Brings Lamps to the Speaking Stones -
and through the bronzed arch… (figure adapted from 1521) -
Bronzed “Mower” amid the company of talkers and the Boatsman, pulling away. No proportions. -
In the Dublin Zoo, Visit or Visitation? -
The Abandoned Galga, far from the Songs of Lorca -
St. Kevin, with patience and courage, Newfoundland caring for the birth and flight -
The Boat -
From this plowed land… and the Rock says to the Dancer I knew you in your long ago dance-by-the-sea -
From the illuminated and consuming sea Death labours to retrieve and revive the long perished -
When only the moon rages, and the lovers lie abed with all their griefs in their arms -
“The Rock: Who will perhaps answer our doubtings? The Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger. He who has seen what has happened. And who sees what is to happen…” -
The Visitor in Re-Visitation -
Let the day end, without madness
BOYD CHUBBS – VISITS & VISITATIONS
NOVEMBER 2 – NOVEMBER 24, 2018
The Christina Parker Gallery is pleased to present Visits and Visitations, featuring new ink drawings by Newfoundland and Labrador artist Boyd Chubbs. This exhibition celebrates the 25 years that Boyd has exhibited with the gallery.
Throughout all of his exhibitions over the last twenty-five years the imagery of Boyd Chubbs has been deeply rooted in the cultural identity of the province. Knowledge of the soul and of the human condition have informed the work to bring the viewer to another level of contemplation of what it means to be of this place.
In a new series of ink drawings titled Visits and Visitations, Chubbs states that there are concrete elements such as rock, water and vegetation in company with the “other” narrating a duel happening or as W.B. Yeats wrote: “…who can tell the dancer from the dance.”
Figures from other places, other times, emerge into this land-sea scape carrying and speaking messages. Lovers and searchers inhabit caves and mines. The drowned and perished rise from waters into re-birth. A Great Organ spreads a triumphal across the sea where eagles drop for providence.
Borrowing from early and contemporary creators become the “other” voices; “other” presences; become visitations…the reaching-across as Blake did with Michelangelo for his purposes and, in turn, “as I borrow from Holbein, Boykov and Squires for my own… the seen and the unseen informs the narrative.”
In the drawing “from this plowed land…” the Rock speaks to the Dancer. Everything is a witness and in listening we can hear that circumstance where the ancient is speaking to the contemporary, saying “I knew you in your long-ago Dance by the Sea”.
Everything is of this world and the visiting worlds…Visits and Visitations.