Like a circle, Calgary artist Jean Pederson’s diverse work is all connected, even if it appears the abstract, portrait, still life and landscape paintings have nothing in common.
Pederson, the newest artist to be represented at the Avens Gallery in Canmore, said her approach often begins – at least at one point along the circle, with portraits. Then, like a writer, she builds a story based on questions that allow her to explore who those people are, where they are from and the objects they have in their home.
And by answering those questions, she is led to create landscape, still life and abstract paintings.
“A lot of the abstracts I’m doing are a feeling of the land, a feeling of the landscape. That is why I started painting people, because people are important to me and who are the people and where are they from and you go from there into the land and the landscape and the items they might have in their home, which is a still life.
“So they may not seem like they are related, but there is a purpose and a reason why I am doing them,” Pederson said Monday (Oct. 4).
From there, she considers the stories within the stories – the icons – that she often weaves into her painting, quite often working with opposites.
“Opposites in colour or transparency, or neutral and pure for example, flat and round, and then concepts of joy and sorrow and I try to work with those kinds of things,” she said.
The paintings are further linked to one another as Pederson then actively rethinks the perspective, seeking to force herself to use her imagination and rely on her creativity and past experiences.
“I do these things to challenge myself to see if I can use what is within me from my own experiences to create something that I’m trying to communicate, as opposed to always depending on something in front of you,” she said.
That allows her to build on the elements of story within each painting and within the body of work as a whole, continuing with an idea she said she learned from an instructor in an art history class, who described art as the communication of ideas.
“I see a real connection with all the arts, so if you can apply theses ideas about creativity as it applies to music, it is really powerful because you can actually use both sides of your brain. It is really powerful. If we can empower ourselves to get ourselves to use both sides of the brain, that is huge,” she said.
Pederson, the author of Expressive Portraits: creative methods for painting people and an internationally-recognized painter based in Calgary, recently won the Walter Phillips watercolour award at the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists at Mount Royal University Sept. 22.
Her first exhibition at Avens Gallery opened Saturday (Oct. 2).
