The Slide Room Gallery is very excited to start our season of virtual exhibitions with Mary Babineau, a very talented local artist who is also a graduate of the Diploma of Fine Arts of Vancouver Island School of Art.
Thank you Mary for opening this new chapter in our gallery.
For more information on Mary visit her website https://marytbabineau.com/
Land of Opportunity, oil, pastel and pencil on canvas, 59.5”x78”, 2018
Turn, oil on canvas, 36”x48”, 2019
North End Night, oil on canvas, 36”x48”, 2018
Driveway In, pencil and oil pastel with collage on wood cradle, 11”x14”, 2018
Guardians, oil and pastel on canvas, 78”x54”, 2018
The Barmaid’s Stray, oil on wood cradle, 18”x24”, 2019
Scones & Fashion, oil on canvas, 48”x36”, 2019
Under Renovation, gouache and mixed media on canvas, 48”x36”, 2018
Today’s Complaint, oil and pastel on canvas, 78”x54”, 2018
Shopping the River Styx, oil, pastel and pencil on canvas, 32”x60”, 2019
Drawings from series, Residue of Promise, mixed media with collage on paper, 2018
Snow Day, from L A Y E R show, re-purposed materials and plaster of Paris, 2019
My work is about where I go and what I’m going through. Paintings express my experience of urban environment, physical state and response to situation.
Process directs how I think through a painting. Some are drawn from my vacation photos, taken when I get a break from responsibility. I use sense memory and gesture to share the pleasure but am unable to deny what is seen, such as the contrasts of lives and fortune on the Las Vegas Strip, or the lot of work over leisure for servers in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Other paintings incorporate photos of spaces and objects in museums: using these I construct inviting sanctuaries which offer me comfort. I also work from imagination, exploring personal motifs and an abstract language of mark-making. There is a release of energy in the immediacy of what I am dealing with and by trusting to intuition and practice an image is created.
I’m currently working on a series about making it through the final year of my father’s life. He passed away recently at the fine age of ninety-seven years and seven months. I was his live-in caregiver for over eight years and suffered from sleep deprivation and financial challenges in this time. The solace I have found in beauty with the tandem flux of change, vulnerability and disintegration manifest in my work.
I’ve learned to accept tedious stress, share some sense of security tempered with dulling fatigue, and observe the falling apart along with the elation of making art from life.
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