Victoria Edgarr Recycling Culture
"Painted Steps", 7' x 30" Detail ,4x8" gouache on Somerset paper 2017-2021
"Goya's "Visión Fantástica" with its lines of refugees, startling perspectives, and a floating presence of hope. influenced the shape of "A Dream of Time". Figures in the Ducks' crowd scene come from another of Goya's Pinturas Negras, "Pilgrimage to San Isidro". This miniature Visión is from "Painted Steps", made as a mapping my Camino de Santiago experience, of walking a 'vast' distance by taking one step at a time. It serves as a metaphor for engaging the thrust of 'heightened intention' in the printmaking journey and navigating this complex process; one bite, one print, at a time." V.E.
"Goya's "Visión Fantástica" with its lines of refugees, startling perspectives, and a floating presence of hope. influenced the shape of "A Dream of Time". Figures in the Ducks' crowd scene come from another of Goya's Pinturas Negras, "Pilgrimage to San Isidro". This miniature Visión is from "Painted Steps", made as a mapping my Camino de Santiago experience, of walking a 'vast' distance by taking one step at a time. It serves as a metaphor for engaging the thrust of 'heightened intention' in the printmaking journey and navigating this complex process; one bite, one print, at a time." V.E.
Tinguely's Doll , battleship linoleum 10x12" de /
In "Tinguely's Doll" Edgarr amplified the idea of random lino cut marks, into an organized flow: 'noise' into 'music', inspired by the kinetic installations of Jean Tinguely. |
'Wolf' 12" x 10" approx. on shaped calf skin
'Wolf' is from a group of gouache/watercolours of wild plastic animals in a flowerpot forest. Painted on raw hides (i.e. parchment), they capture some of the twists and turns in the evolving relationship between animals and humans. |
We visited Victoria during the process of making the plate and a proof for "A Dream of Time". While making a lino plate there are many proofs made until all the details are carved out and the colours are perfect.
Pulling State Proof #7 in water-soluble ink in the artist's Victoria Chinatown studio.
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Above: Edgarr points out the details from her sketch that she is referencing. The plate is made from battleship linoleum.
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Walking Through the Image
“From the bubble of Covid, noticing how one thing leads to another, I thought, it's time to get my ducks in a row. Art making is for me a process of figuring things out, trying to think clearly about this world that feeds our bodies and our minds and the imperative to rebalance the culture/nature relationship at this crossroads of climate change.” V.E.
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We breathe, we see, we hear, we walk. Walking is one of those basic actions we all do without much thought, yet for Victoria Edgarr walking is a creative journey that generates ideas, offers new perspectives, and connects the dream world to the real world. Edgarr took PRINT on a walk through her creative process and the influences behind her limited edition print “A Dream of Time”.
Victoria Edgarr is an accomplished contemporary printmaker whose work explores multiple metaphorical narratives, through language, concepts, history, experiences, and often walking. While contemplating the edition for the PRINTgallery, Edgarr stepped out into her downtown Victoria neighbourhood to map out the framework for her upcoming lino print. There are so many ideas that inform Edgarr’s artwork that it becomes essential she works the ideas and concepts down to specific elements and images. Energetic movement like walking enables Edgarr’s ideas to develop as she establishes a set of rules or boundaries to freely create within. While walking down to the ocean the framework for “A Dream of Time '' took shape with the four distinct subjects: window, a crowd, a room, and ducks. The dream world then becomes part of the real world via sketches and photographs as the visual elements start to shape the narrative. In the studio the collected elements are traced, digitised, layered, and manipulated into an interwoven metaphorical visual printed story providing the viewer an opportunity to spend time “walking through” the image. Edgarr explained that she observes artwork in terms of one reading body language and that each viewer will have their own relationship with art, asking: How do you feel about it, what’s your emotional reaction? How is it put together? Why these images? What does it say to me? What are the personal connections and how does it stimulate your recollections? Edgarr invites you to spend time walking through her print and consider the elements that are used, how they fit together, why depict these objects, and what is the story? |
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Artist BioSince the 1970's Victoria Edgarr has produced, exhibited, taught, travelled for, enjoyed (despaired) and been sustained by art. She made the shift west with Alain Costaz in 1993, becoming responsible for Ground Zero Printmakers (GZPS), and living and working in their Victoria Chinatown studio. Victoria studied art at Dawson CEGEP and Concordia University in Montréal Québec, and trained at La Guilde Graphique print studio in Montreal and La Paz Raku studio in Victoria Vancouver Island BC.
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"Au seuil des héros " Zinc Etching on Rives,
edition of 13, 2000, 14 x 18" "Hero’s Threshold" is a landscape of developing technologies; the alphabet, the telephone, the cog and the wheel, the science of agriculture. Edgarr made this etching for an exhibition in Québec heralding the New Millennium. Left:The Fool, Love Poem artist book, pages 3&4, edition of 10 6 1/2 x 51/4 each Lino on Rives, Stone Litho by Alain Costaz |
A Dream of Time, linocut, 12.5" x 20", edition of 30, Victoria Edgarr, 2022
We acknowledge the generous support of the CRD arts commission for this project. |