Your online Art gallery

Andrew Chisholm

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Recent Work
Abstracts
La Petite Morte
Lottery of Symbols (paintings)
Oil & acrylic paintings
Miniatures
Prints
Watercolours
Drawings

Andrew claims to have started drawing before he could read or
write, and has continued to do so for over thirty years. After several years of self-motivated study, Andrew enrolled at the University of Western Ontario where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999 and a Bachelor of Education in 2001. Since then he has worked for the Thames Valley DSB as an occasional art and/or English teacher.

Andrew currently works out of his studio, a converted garage, in London, Ontario. His paintings are usually glazes. Originally working in oil, he has been working with acrylic glazes most recently. Most surfaces are prepared by the artist; he builds the frames and stretches the canvases on which he paints. He has made the paper on which he prints and yet, in the past, he has also found expression on found objects: scrap board; guitars; old skateboards; and various other surfaces.

His work centres on himself; his experiences and his perceptions of the external world as they relate to him. Andrew’s paintings explore several different levels: the physical qualities of the medium; the nature of illusion through realistic representation; and his own exploration of symbols and archetypes. A common object, face, or place may assume mystical significance; archetypal images are ordered or conceived from his personal perspective.

He claims that "the external world is ordered by the perceptual experience of the onlooker. The light of the external world illuminates the object while the mind constructs the objects significance." Many of these paintings are drawn from personal images and have had the personal interpretation and reference points super-imposed upon them. Each of the paintings is a part of an ongoing quest: an episode of the artist in an on going pursuit of ideas and relationships. At the centre of this quest is the elusive truth or holy grail which the artist seeks; here, perhaps, is pure crystalline perception and communication. The paintings are records of fleeting impressions and epiphanies which serve as illuminations and pose questions on the journey - a journey which often seems akin to Browning’s poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."

Exhibitions/Activities

* Square Foot Show, Westland Gallery, London, Ontario, 2013 & 2014

* Juried Miniature Show, The Art Exchange, London, Ontario, 2008, 2010 - 2014

* Clash of the Canvases, APK, London, Ontario, 2013

* Paper Eight, The Arts Project, London, Ontario, 2013

* Back Alley Arts Festival, East Village Arts Co-op, London, Ontario, 2009

* Visual Fringe, London Fringe Festival, London, Ontario, 2003, 2004, 2005 & 2008

* ‘The Best of . . .’, espy Studio, 538 Adelaide St., London, Ontario, 2001

* Live performances with ‘The Riderless’ at the Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario, 2000-02

* Untitled 1999: U.W.O. Visual Arts Graduating Exhibition, 125 Dundas and The ArtLab, U.W.O., 1999

* Going Beyond: Printmaking Reconsidered, McIntosh Gallery, U.W.O., 1998

* Open Gallery: 3rd Year Painting, The ArtLab, U.W.O., 1998

© All of the images on this website are copyrighted original artworks by their author and are protected by international copyright law. No materials in this gallery may be reproduced, copied, downloaded, or used in any form without written permission of the contemporary artist Andrew Chisholm.