Category Archives: Canadian art

Canadian Art by Stephen Gibb

For more please visit the website: stephengibb.com

Canadian art is more than the Group of Seven. It is more than our glorious indigenous art. It is more than the stereotypical landscape and wildlife painting that dominates reproductions on calendars and postcards and garner top rankings on Google searches.

The Canadian art identity is subtle. To an Asian it would likely be identified as “western” and to a European it would likely be construed as American. It would probably take a fellow Canadian to extract the Canadianness from artwork that doesn’t rely on typical geographical cues (wildlife, wilderness) and symbols (hockey, poutine etc.).

There is a state of mind represented that could loosely be identified as “not American”. It is a perspective of detachment and distance that allows Canadian art to pry up the corners of North American culture to expose the hidden elements that jiggle in the shadows of the periphery. Outside the glow of the spotlight, in the American blind spots, lurks the forgotten, the disenfranchised, the marginalized; the alienated…that when brought into sharp focus tells another story altogether – a Canadian story.

This is the playground in which many Canadian artists build their sandcastles. The underbelly of Pop culture super-saturation, the dark corners out of the line of fire of the relentless mass-marketing assault.

It just happens that my surreal sandbox is full of childhood remnants and symbols drenched in literal word and image play.

When I discovered Hieronymus Bosch at age 11 I knew I was going to be an artist. Up until that point my idea of an artist was Norman Rockwell, so imagine my surprise.

The artwork that made an early impression on my tiny 1960s mind was Rat Fink and the gruesome “Hot Rod” characters popularized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. There was something both revolting and appealing about his creations that I can’t quite resolve in my mind.

I also had this inexplicable sort of fascination/repulsion with commercial icons like the lovable Aunt Jemima, the quirky Quaker Oats guy and the unsettling nursery rhyme illustrations of Humpty Dumpty, man-in-the-moon faces and any highly-rendered cartoon character displaying an extreme emotion.

Everyone is quick to lump me with surrealism and specifically with Salvador Dali but I think I have more to do with MAD magazine than with Sigmund Freud.