Sylvia Kavanaugh, Moving Through Transience (2007), oil, acrylic, paper, fabric, thread and wire on canvas [Eastwood Onley Gallery, Vancouver BC, Oct 23-30]

Sylvia Kavanaugh, Restrained Vocabulary of Alone, oil, acrylic, paper, fabric, thread, wire on canvas [Eastwood Onley Gallery, Vancouver BC, Oct 23-30]

Sylvia Kavanaugh, Release Beyond Directional Bounds, oil, acrylic, paper, fabric, thread, wire on canvas [Eastwood Onley Gallery, Vancouver BC, Oct 23-30]

Sylvia Kavanaugh is a visual artist living in North Vancouver BC who previously worked as a garment designer. Kavanaugh trained at the Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion Design in Vancouver, BC and spent several years designing, manufacturing and illustrating her own clothing before turning to painting full-time. She currently creates figurative imagery layered with fabric, thread, wire and paint on canvas.

Dancer is a series of canvasses and papers whose boundaries have been treated like enclosures for figure drawing. Using the surface planes of the artworks as her grounds and extending the imagery to the edges of the “illusionary walls,” she illustrates what she describes as metaphoric figures, enclosed and contained by the artworks themselves. Several of the works are reminiscent of beds or folded curtains with their rumpled, semi-transparent, floating fabric partially enclosing the nude women’s bodies.

Kavanaugh was born in Saskatchewan. Her training has included full-time art and design studies at the University of Alberta in the Fine Arts Program. She has worked as a graphic artist, illustrator, assistant to a television set designer and a design room sample cutter for a garment manufacturer in addition to her work as an artist.

www.eastwoodonleygallery.com

Mia Johnson