Sea Otter Whip Tail
January 14 – 30, 2012
Opening: Saturday, January 14, 2–4 p.m.
BAU-XI GALLERY
340 Dundas St. West
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G5
T: 416.977.0600
E: toronto@bau-xi.com
www.bau-xiphoto.com
Hours: Mon-Sat 10-5:30, Sun 11-5:30
Janna Watson is a young artist who has enjoyed early success in her painting career, shortly after graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Janna’s work includes a beautiful freeness, a carefully balanced pairing of loose painting and stain combined with perfectly placed architectural lines. Janna says she is “inspired by the contours of natural landscape and the harsh outline of urbanity.” Most of her paintings are on wood panels coated in resin, giving a deep saturation to the swirling stains of colour and sharp lines below.
Watson states, “Line has an invisible and tangible ability to transmit energy and information. Line is what weaves forms and thought together and guides the eye through volume, space and time; it makes my thought process visible. Thoughts are triggered by outside influences, physically processed, and then sent outward once again. Thoughts cannot be possessed. They are simple, sometimes intruding, fleeting and completely intimate. They are the structures that manifest into real life with uncomprehendable potential. These are the qualities imbued in line. Line is used as a metaphor in my work, for the lifespan of a thought caught on canvas. It also symbolizes my opposing yet symbiotic lifestyles visible in the tension between organic and geometric forms. When I am painting, I strive to communicate the ideas I am digesting which give form to the image.”
Watson is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and has already begun building an impressive list of exhibitions for such a young painter.