Elizabeth Buset’s four large realist paintings in Gallery
two for a show titled, Accosting the Ordinary, are immediate hits. Most
everyone can appreciate the incredible amount of time spent on each piece and
most everyone likes paintings of representational objects.
However, unlike a
still life or a typical floral, Buset chooses subjects and isolates them to
make a philosophical statement. With limited referents the paintings work to
inhibit subjectivity (your opinion) to direct you more easily to their philosophical
subject. If not, you may at least feel a sense of unease.
Buset completed
her dissertation for an MFA last year at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland,
having received an Ambassadorial scholarship and studying under the guidance of
a controversial Finnish artist, Teemu Maki, famous for killing a cat and then
masturbating on it in a gallery in Helsinki.
Anywaaaaaay, Buset got
her HBFA and a teaching degree at Lakehead University. As well as being an
artist, Buset supply teaches and visits schools with the Learning Through the
Arts program.
Regarding her
paintings, “It’s a huge physical process,” states Buset. “Some of the paintings
take me over 700 hours to do. When you’re using a brush that’s just over a
millimeter wide, it takes a while.” She admits she doesn’t enjoy the process so
much, but loves when comes together.
And the works are
very impressive. The attention to detail, composition, colour, and ultimately
the underlying reason behind such attention make for real eye-grabbers. This kind
of realistic approach waxed and waned over the centuries. The Dutch golden age
of painting, the pop-art movement in the 1960s (Audrey Flack and others) and
the current Hyper Realism movement in England are all influences on Buset’s
work.
The canvas oil paintings were completed in
Finland and shipped here. Each depicts a singular object or theme, or dog on a
white background. Buset explains that the large scale helps people to reexamine
the ordinary, and that the works are meant to find meaning in the mundane and
pose questions about the role of consumer society in our every day lives.
The work called,
Paint Fan, contains 960 distinct colours. Buset explains that the painting was
inspired by stories of people who bring paint swatches to galleries in order to
find artwork to match their furniture.
“It’s about the
commercialization of art and looking at art as décor and its aesthetic beauty
as opposed to a form of philosophy.”
Buset likes that
people will connect to the work, and think upon it. Knowing that the paintings
take a great deal of time, she points out, causes people to reflect more on the
work. So although the technique can become the subject, Buset also believes
that all art is inherently political. Buset quotes the mysterious communist playwright,
Bertolt Brecht, “Art is not a mirror to reflect society, but a hammer to
reshape it.”
Although
ambitious, Buset is still on an exploratory learning curve; eagerly looking to
see if the time and thought she puts into her paintings has an effect and if
it’s all worth it. So, although she doesn’t expect to reshape society in any
dramatic way, she does believe, more realistically, “You only need an audience
of one.”
Elizabeth
Buset will have a solo show in 2015 at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. Buset is
working to exhibit locally and internationally.
No comments:
Post a Comment