Enjoy work by Raymond Martin, Bruno Bobak and Joseph Plaskett on display at Gallery 78 March 15 – April 7.
Immerse yourself in the new and the deeply personal in three new exhibitions opening Friday, March 15, at Gallery 78. Travel to Kangiqsujuaq, Northern Québec, through colourful and intricate paintings, alongside the deft hand of celebrated New Brunswick artist Raymond Martin, and experience the mountainous and icy landscape, majestic gyrfalcons, and daily tasks of rod-fishing and mussel picking of this northern community. In Intimate Views, savour precious and fleeting moments immortalized in previously unseen secondary market drawings and paintings by Bruno Bobak, and take delight in the visual philosophy of Joseph Plaskett in Still Life in Pastel. All artworks will be available to view on-line starting Tuesday, March 12, and will be on display until April 7.
About the Artists:
Raymond Martin
Raymond Martin is a child psychologist and self-taught painter. He was born in 1958 at Lac-a-la-Croix, Lac-Saint-Jean, Québec and has called Moncton home for more than 20 years.
“Raymond Martin transposes the beauty and wonder of the world into remarkable paintings of simplified outlines and flattened views that resonate as material analogues for the unconscious, the mythical and the spiritual. Incised lines in thick impasto lead us along circuitous paths and decorative labyrinthe patterns into a nonlineal, transpersonal ‘Dream Time’.
“As an expression of the spontaneous, intuitive self, of the awakening child within, Martin’s art may be linked to the history of ‘childlike’ works by 20th century artists like Picasso, Klee and Dubuffet. Within the Moncton Acadian art scene, his work shares affinities with the ebullient ‘Neo-folk’ paintings of Yvon Gallant, Nancy Morin and Francis Coutellier. Integrating a deep awareness of the psychological power and magic of children’s drawings, his enchanted vision poetically melds the Cartesian split between inner human consciousness and the objective reality of the world outside.” (excerpts from the essay “The Enchanted Vision of Raymond Martin” by Terry Graff, January 1994)
Raymond’s paintings are found in important public collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank, Foreign Affairs Canada, the New Brunswick Art Bank and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery collection, as well as corporate and private collections. He has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions since 1985.
Bruno Bobak
Aged 20 and just out of art studies at Central Technical School in Toronto, Bruno Bobak made an impressive debut as a professional artist. Having enlisted in the army, he submitted a watercolour to an army art exhibition, won first prize, and was appointed as an official war artist in 1943. From then on he was included in important exhibitions and galleries in Canada, the United States and abroad with opportunity to travel, explore, and broaden his creative experiences. It was during one such study trip to Europe that news arrived of his appointment as artist-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in 1960. It was to be only a one-year stay in Fredericton, but it turned out to be a lifetime. From 1962 until his retirement in 1987, Bruno Bobak was director of the UNB Art Centre. (full bio here)
Joseph Plaskett
Joseph Plaskett was born in 1918 in New Westminster, BC. Joe took a liberal arts grounding at the University of British Columbia, resulting in an honours degree in history. Though he was a teacher for a few years, Joe was already exploring his interest in art. Studying at the Vancouver School of Art (1940-2) brought praise and encouragement from GG Sedgewick, Lawren Harris, Jock Macdonald, Jack Shadbolt and BC Binning, the names on the foundation stones of Canadian art. Support came also from AY Jackson and then Emily Carr whose scholarship Joe was the first to receive. This scholarship was a turning point as it took Joe to San Francisco where abstraction awaited him in teachers like David Park and Clyfford Still. In New York City under Hans Hoffmann, a central figure in the history of modern art, Plaskett further explored the boundaries of pictorial structure and in 1949 Joe travelled to Paris where he tamed these forces with instruction from masters including Fernand Léger, a key figure in the history of all art. Innate talent began to stabilise into something greater. (full bio here)
