Joseph Plaskett: Celebration
Bau-Xi Gallery,
Vancouver
Sept 6, 2001 - Sept 19,
2001
 Anenome, Amaryllis, (White), (2001), oil on canvas |
Now in his 80s, Canadian artist Joe
Plaskett continues to draw and paint brilliantly. In the
Spring of 2001, he received the Order of Canada for his
excellence in the field of visual art. While embarking on a
new series of still life paintings last year, Plaskett
suddenly found himself focusing on the objects themselves,
to the exclusion of foreground or background. This exhibit
traces his creative journey as he explored the necessity of
backgrounds, tables and other grounds.
As the work progressed, vases of flowers, bowls of fruit and
pieces of china began shifting towards the edges of their
frames, in some cases leaving behind painterly expanses of
neither-ground-nor-object. His most recent paintings have an
all-over patterning of repeated objects - leaves, black
coffee cups and saucers, wine glasses - which are almost
suspended in a whimsical sense of vertical space.
By making duplications of the oil paintings in pastels, and
by copying pastel drawings as oil paintings, Plaskett adds
another engaging note to the work.
© Mia Johnson