Arrows and Bullets Comb my Hair
On right now at Gallery @ 501 in Sherwood Park is Arrows and Bullets Comb my Hair, an exhibition of drawings, collages, and prints done by three artists whose works I really enjoy: Blair Brennan, Patrick J. Reed and Richard Boulet.
Almost all of the works are presented as a series and read as equal parts obsession and catharsis, making visible the lived experiences of each artist. Intensely personal, the works reflect both private mythologies and symbolic cosmologies not entirely accessible to the viewer. Recurring images and themes become touchstones that serve to bind each series together and point cryptically to the stories that appear to lie beneath the surface.
There is an honesty to these works that comes as a result of the spontaneous and seemingly unpolished nature of them. Drawings done with ink or paint, collages made from the detritus of everyday life, a re-purposed Styrofoam tray transformed into a print matrix: the materials and processes used by Brennan, Reed and Boulet are deliberately low-tech, heightening the immediacy and visceral quality of their projects. Many of the illustrations have an abject or disturbing quality to them which may come in small part from the contents, but more so from the uneasy feeling of being unwittingly exposed to someone else’s diary.
Boulet interprets Mahfouz
