Ehryn Torrell - Self-Similar

Ehryn Torrell- I Florence Trust, Summer exhibition July 2011. London, England

Ehryn Torrell - In amongst the ruins (detail). 2005. Acrylic on canvas.
19' x 5'6" Photo by Guy L'Heureureux

Ehryn Torrell - Atfernoon Old Town. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 58" x 68"

Ehryn Torrell - I installation view, Self-similar. February 17 to April 26 2011.
Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Canada

This week I was fortunate to attend Ehryn Torrell's artist talk about her work and then see her series "Self-Similar" at the opening at St. Mary's University Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Ehryn visited China five months after the earthquake of 2008. The devastation and resilience of the Chinese people became her subject. However, she views these works as reflective of her inner states of mind.

Her work is impressive and large, painted loosely, but includes interesting details. Each work encompasses its own world of debris, which Ehryn described as composed of various elements derived from multiple sketches and photos.

Ehryn Torrell writes about her series "Self-Similar":
Using the lens of the built environment to explore personal and universal conditions of human experience, my paintings examine empathy, contingency, loss and vulnerability. The title of this body of work, Self-similar, borrows in equal part from mathematics and film. In mathematics, an object or thing is described as self-similar when one or all parts are smaller copies of a larger shape. In Jean-Luc Goddards 1967 film "Two or three things I know about her," protagonist Juliette Janson describes feelings of alienation from the city and longs to re-experience a moment when she felt connected.

http://www.ehryntorrell.com/artwork.php?di=1iselfsim&fi=1mongkokm


While in Halifax, I visited the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. I particularly enjoyed Elizabeth Enders exhibition "Painting...Place." These works were painted and drawn while Enders traveled and while she resided in her cottage on the Nova Scotia coast. I appreciate the simplicity of her landscape work and its evocative power. Perhaps I will be able to tame the "baroque" tendency in my work so that it can exist alongside such simplicity in the same work. 

My mentor, Suzanne Gauthier, suggested I inquire about the Art Sales and Rental Gallery in the AGNS. I plan to submit a few pieces when I am back in Halifax in October.

My visit also included visits to commercial galleries Studio 21 and Page and Strange Gallery. I dropped into the faculty exhibit of NASCAD next door to P & S. Three artists in the show used plywood in three different ways - food for thought! Suzanne gave me a tour of the new NASCAD campus by the waterfront near Pier 21. It is huge with great facilities for ceramics, metal work and sculpture.

I am anxious to get back to work on my canvas and bring it to some sort of resolution and I am looking forward to working on plywood again.