Public Pool | Louise Dee
Louise Dee is a British-born, Vancouver-based, emerging artist. She paints figurative abstractions and fictional portraits to explore themes of identity, belonging and the concept of home. Louise is interested in the way mythologies, subjective realities and historical narratives inform a sense of self; and the ways identities are moulded at a young age by family systems and cultural forces.
Engaged mostly with painting, drawing and collage, her work is in part autobiographical and an attempt to mine her own stories and beliefs in order to better understand herself and the world. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Kingston Prize for portraiture.
“In my work I explore what it means to be home. I am interested in the way ideas of self and identities are formed and bind us together in groups. Home may be thought of as a space, a place, a location within the body or an emotional, sensory response.
It is a point of departure and return, in the mind’s eye existing beyond and within time and space. It is also an intersectional space where traditions, narratives and mythologies are expressed, exerted and assimilated”.
Louise Dee
Small Fish Big Landscape | Suzo Hickey
Suzo Hickey is a painter living in Prince Rupert, BC. She migrated from coast (Prince Rupert) to desert (Kamloops) and back to coast (Vancouver) in 1991, attending Emily Carr College of Art and Design. Since graduating in 1994, she has exhibited in BC and the US on themes of queer mothering, urban landscapes, and death in the family.
Her work has always been informed by the specifics of her life: the death of her 24-year-old son in Mirificus, stereotyping in You Fucking Fruit, queer motherhood in Let Me Go Down in the Mud.
“small fish BIG LANDSCAPE is an exploration of the houses, trees, power lines, mountains and sky in the Northern Canadian landscape, through the lens of lockdowns, travel restrictions, masks, and social distancing. If you are not going anywhere, you bring the world to you. You look at what you have and you make it your world.
In early 2020 the world went into lockdown – concerts, festivals, galleries, and performances were cancelled or closed. But art making continued. I went to my studio every day, adding to a body of work that, for the time being, had no place to go. There is something freeing in this process. No deadlines, no promises to deliver, no imagined theme to stick to…”.
Suzo Hickey
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