Patrick Landsley - 2008

Time Lapse

At Winchester Galleries on Broad Street

Opening: Saturday February 2, 2008 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Exhibition continues until February 27, 2008

Patrick Landsley depicts landscape and - since c1968 - architecture. He has also portrayed the human form, for example in the 'Kore' series showing female votive statuary at the Acropolis.

An art student in Paris in 1951-53, Landsley developed a Cubist approach to explore his interest in pictorial space. He added certain School of Paris (the avant-garde art movement) qualities, not its non-objectivity but its vivid colour, controlled brushwork and the sensation of light manifesting from specific colour and form relationships.

In 1968 Landsley simplified his line and colour to reflect the geometric sparseness of colour-field paintings. He also increased his use of the perspectival trope whereby the vanishing point is located behind the observer, and he continued to juxtapose contradictory perspectives - as when a shadow contradicts the direction of another shadow.

Visual conceptualism is usually language/associated (vide Hans Haake, Jacques Lacan….) and often invokes the concept of time-warp, but while the latter is a central theme for Landsley, his media are not driven by language. They take their cue from how visual ideas are pieced together from different moments of visual perception.

Landsley has explored with great variety and insight the dynamics of a Cubist/colourfield brand of painting. He is a national treasure for that extraordinary achievement. But his work also holds interest for its icononography: Canada and, for instance, Greece where he lived for six years.

Patrick Landsley had a distinguished teaching career - from 1954 to 1969 for Arthur Lismer and from 1969 to 1995 for Concordia University.

Patrick Landsley and his wife Cathy Marshall make their home in Woodstock, Ontario.