Emily Pittman – Looking Forward
Christina Parker Gallery is pleased to announce, Looking Forward, an exhibition of new work by painter Emily Pittman. Selected paintings and collages explore the concept of home within Newfoundland and Labrador through familiar architectural elements and vibrant local colour palettes.
The exhibition opens Friday, November 8, with an opening reception from 5:30 – 8:00 pm.
Emily Pitman’s art practice explores minimalist architecture through layered designs that she compositionally and structurally alters. Modern dream homes and preserved heritage structures are brought together using local buildings as subject matter allowing her to build upon design decisions of architects and contractors. She selects the structures for their unusual angles, intriguing compositions and perspective planes. She is particularly interested in buildings that appear ordinary at first glance but yield strange and compelling shapes when simplified and broken apart. Each composition is an exploration of colour and perspective using angles and gradations to manipulate the sense of depth. Her materials incorporate house paint, paint chips, and evocative colour names as an examination of the way the material is both functional and aesthetic.
Looking Forward is comprised of a series of three approaches to the work, the Dream Home, Ten Historic Towns, and Steep Lines, Steady Levels, with each series building a sense of place rather than a specific record or detailed portrait. They function both as a reflection and a subversion of this created place. The colour selections Pittman employs are unapologetic choices for domestic spaces, both interior and exterior. These vibrant hues capture the carefree nature of colour selection that often abandons us after childhood, which makes my created spaces, while unspecific, nostalgic and welcoming. This abstraction of architecture explores the form and function of houses and “homes” in both identity and self-defined community.
Emily Pittman is a visual artist and writer based in St. John’s, NL. She earned an Honours BA (with Distinction) majoring in Studio Art and English from the University of Guelph. Emily grew up in Clarenville, NL, and moved to St. John’s in May 2016. Emily was a finalist for Arts NL’s 2019 Emerging Artist Award and has exhibited at venues including The Rooms, Eastern Edge Gallery (St. John’s) and Boarding House Gallery (Guelph), and created a mural for Bonavista’s Church Street Festival (St. John’s) in 2019. She has been featured on the cover of Visual Arts News, as well as in Newfoundland Quarterly, Riddle Fence, The Overcast, and The Telegram. Emily co-founded The Gathered Gallery, an independently-run visual arts and curatorial writing blog (www.thegatheredgallery.com).