Art on the line

There’s a line for every artistic taste in the new exhibit opening up at the Art Gallery of St. Albert tomorrow. Three disparate artists bring their diverse styles and subjects into one visually compelling show.

Delineate features the drawings by Pierre Bataillard, photography by Florence Debeugny and paintings by Tanya Klimp.

“We brought these artists together because although they’re working in dissimilar mediums they share a very strong visual emphasis on line,” explained exhibition curator Jenny Willson-McGrath. “They’re all quite startlingly different but that’s the beauty of this exhibition, really.”

Bonnyville’s Bataillard returns to the gallery after a four-year hiatus. He brings a series of new works that take landscapes or still life studies translated into Expressionistic drawings with jazzy colours, shapes and, yes, lines. The Swiss-born artist also formerly worked in architecture, a profession known to place importance on lines in drawings.

“A lot of that drafting drawing has passed into his artistic practice. He’s a very meticulous person,” she said, adding that he sometimes paints with both hands. “He’s always looking for new ways to challenge himself.”

Living in rural Alberta gives him much opportunity to be inspired by wildlife and the gorgeous scenes of the countryside of the West. Bataillard will return to the gallery again next year with a solo show.

French-born Florence Debeugny now lives in Vancouver. She brings a collection of night photography shots featuring paved road surfaces, with results that vary from amorphous abstractions to scribbled graffiti to alien landscapes.

“She uses a Nikon F3 and slide camera – that kind of ‘old school’ – to take pictures,” Willson-McGrath revealed.

The negatives are printed on transparencies and mounted on backlit boxes for a wonderful effect.

“They actually glow. They’re really different,” she continued, referring to the eerie yellow glow of the streetlights that reflect off of the tarmac in her images. “She doesn’t do any manipulation of her images. It’s all straight photography.”

While Debeugny works at night, Tanya Klimp requires the sunlight for her unusual series. These large mostly acrylic mixed media paintings trace sunbeams across the artist’s studio for six weeks, using the light to direct her brushstrokes on the canvases.

The University of Alberta Fine Arts grad grew up in St. Albert has travelled the country so she has probably become quite familiar with the path of our native star.

Willson-McGrath elaborated.

“She traced the shapes that the sun left behind. Later, she went in and used her own abstract artistic license to fill in the gaps. The work is interesting in that there is an element of control and an element of spontaneity. She said that she found both of those processes to be enjoyable.”