“FROM HERE TO THERE: and back again”
LeEtta LaFontaine
I have been painting since 1982 and received a Fine Arts Diploma in 2002. I have experienced success in many mediums; painting, photography, printmaking, digital art, and drawing.
I started out doing extreme realism with no desire to understand or venture into abstraction. It wasn’t until I was in university with professors pushing me into being looser in my work and the frustration I felt at not being able to be ‘loose’ that I started to gain a respect for the world of abstraction. After finishing university I thought the desire to connect with abstraction would leave…instead it became stronger compelling me to keep pushing through to understand how to do abstraction. Finally I came to recognize how ‘understanding’ wasn’t the answer…it was emotion.
My work now takes me from the realm of realism to abstraction; abstraction to realism; revolutions of two separate worlds which sometimes meet on canvas as one. The two techniques satisfy me in different ways. The world of realism feeds my linear, logical, analytical side through control and precision; the world of abstraction is helping feed my soul and unearth my emotions through intuitive expression and freedom of movement. My realistic paintings or drawings have clear end results from the beginning; abstract paintings are done one step at a time with no idea what the end result will be until I’m there.
My realism work is now done mostly in charcoal on canvas with an acrylic finish; a technique I stumbled upon and perfected; whereas my abstracts, done in acrylic, are vibrant and sometimes wild variations of texture and colour.
To help me further discover who I am as an artist I started a year long commitment this last January (2010) of doing an abstract painting a day, with my non-dominant left hand, and writing a short blog about each day’s experience.
Milan Basic
Milan Basic
Seeing Milan Basic’s work on the wall at Groop Gallery makes one of his first comments self-evident.
“I prefer working big,” he says at the opening of A Perfect Wurld on Friday evening. “I was, and still am, a mural painter, so I’m used to working on a large scale.”
Many of the works are mixed-media, having a three-D look that stretches around the sides of the canvas.
“I don’t like framing,” Basic says. “I like to let the work flow.”
And while none of his paintings flow all the way around to the back of the canvas for a full three-D experience, he does work in three dimensions at times.
“The first painting I turned into a sculpture is that one,” he says, indicating The World is Flat. “It shows the world, with the corruption eating it from the inside.” Read More…
