Join OCAD alumna Ina Puchala for sparkling wine and chocolate truffles at the opening reception of "Summer Smoke & Paint."
“Being able to take the paint right to the hard edge and then over is exciting,” says Puchala about her leap to a larger format, and from mylar to wood panel.
Independent curator and art writer EARL MILLER references this “definitive notion of edge” in Puchala’s work by recalling how Pollack and DeKooning “attempt to visualize in abstraction the sensation of standing on the edge of an abyss.”
Gripping these peripheries, Puchala paints the power surge that connects the abstract to the visceral. “By doing so,” writes Miller, “Puchala proposes that the act of painting bears equal significance to the finished project,” noting also that in Puchala’s exposure of the underpainting, she reveals her connection to the work’s unique history and process.
About Puchala’s work, GARY MICHAEL DAULT writes: “Every smear, sweep, swirl, pool, puddle, coagulation, hook or eye of it, every impress of one hue upon another, every juxtaposition of one hue to the next hue, speaks to the whole work, and, ultimately, to the viewer.”
SUMMER SMOKE & PAINT is Puchala’s sixth solo exhibition in 12 years. She has exhibited at Mittica Gallery, Mercer Union, John B. Aird, Gallery 1313, and the Art Galleries of Mississauga, Peel and Woodstock [London, Ontario.]
The exhibition continues through Saturday, November 15, 2008.
Special thanks to the Ontario Arts Council