And They Faded into the Landscape
Paintings by Arnold Shives

An important figure in Canadian art and printmaking, North Vancouver artist Arnold Shives exhibits seven large-scale mixed media paintings in his most recent exhibition. Shives disrupts his landscapes by playing with spatiality; interspersed with mountains, trees and water are abstract shapes and lines. These graphic elements are informed by Shives’ printmaking practice, as are the textures and areas of relief on the paintings. At times shapes frame or obscure the landscape, other times lines float on the surface of the paintings. They also serve as a reference to topography, leading us like a trail through a forest, offering us multiple perspectives of the landscape simultaneously.

A grove of vine maples close to Shives’ home was in initial impetus for this body of work which went through many iterations in the years it took to create. The paintings were pared back and almost completely obliterated using razor blades, then they were built up again using collage, stencil, and stamping techniques. The creation of these paintings, their growth, decay and rebirth, mirrors the cycles of nature. The ghostly remains of the groves that originally inspired him can still be glimpsed, like spectres, beneath the layers of paint.

Born in Vancouver, BC, Arnold Shives studied at the University of British Columbia, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Stanford University where he received a Carnagie Fellowship. He has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad and his work can be found in international and national public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Burnaby Art Gallery, and Art Gallery of Ontario.

Image Credit: Arnold Shives, Mt. Fromme III (detail), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48” x 72,” 2014.

Artist Talk and Reception: Sunday September 16, 2 – 4 p.m.
Reduction | Reconstruction: Drawing Through Erasure Workshop: Sunday September 30, 2 – 4 p.m.