Interviews & News Stories

ECLECTIC, OFTEN CHAOTIC WORKS BY NORGATE, HILDEBRAND FEATURED IN EDMONTON SHOW BY JANICE RYAN, EDMONTON JOURNAL

date of interview: 05/12/2011

When it comes to storytelling — be it in books, movies or art — the strongest stimulus for personal thoughts, reactions and feelings is often to what is left unsaid. Within that open bit of space lies the freedom to puzzle together information, ask questions and fill in the blanks with your own interpretations and to ultimately make the story our own.

Gallery owner, Agnes Bugera came up with the exhibition title, “Storytelling,” while viewing the paintings of Sheila Norgate and Meghan Hildebrand side by side.

“All the paintings tell a story,” says Bugera. “Sheila’s stencilled words, the writing and images of birds or dogs tells us about something she is feeling in a subconscious way and lets us figure it out based on our own experiences. Meghan’s work tells me stories that are very mysterious, as if they were from another planet. There are creatures, not quite human, yet very much alive.”

Both artists express themselves with a flamboyant palette, elements of collage and a sense of playful animation. The work is engaging, easy to access and tempts the viewer to linger and ponder.

Norgate, a full-time painter on B.C.’s Gabriola Island, has been exhibiting throughout North America (and has gallery representation both sides of the border) since 1988. Also, a seasoned keynote speaker, her two current performative slide shows — “Charm, Beauty and Poise” (a mock etiquette lecture she delivers in a vintage red taffeta party dress) and “I Never Met a Blank Canvas I Didn’t Like” – are infused with the same wit and proactive humour as her art work. She plays with language and creatively re-jigs expression both on the canvas and within the titles.

Intrigued by the idea of “life as a circus,” Around She Goes represents “us running around trying to be perfect, trying to escape the sense of being flawed which our culture reflects back to us constantly.”

“I am a feminist.” says Norgate, “It is an f-word now, but I have been since my consciousness was raised in 1968 and I’ve never looked back.”

Norgate’s stories reflect her life and experiences. There are things going on on the canvas that may not be explainable, but there are plenty of recognizable elements for the viewer to latch onto.

Images and text — a blend of paper clippings and hand-carved stamps — add what the painter describes as a “level a precision against a back drop of chaos” referring to the splatters and drips that appear when she decides to “throw the paint around.”

Working entirely from an intuitive place with no preliminary sketches, Norgate’s paintings can transform radically from start to finish, adding a delicious edge to the work.

“As you get more invested in the painting,” she says, “you get less likely to take chances with it and there is a critical point where you either have to take the chances or you are going to have a dead painting.”

Meghan Hildebrand, originally from Whitehorse, Yukon, now lives and paints from her studio in Powell River on the Sunshine Coast in B.C. Studying at the Kootenay School of Arts and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, her work has been shown across the country for over a decade. This show marks Hildebrand’s first exhibition at the Agnes Bugera Gallery.

“Storytelling” is a good fit for my work because I definitely see myself in the storytelling tradition,” says Hildebrand. “I love a painting that makes you wonder what the story is, with lots of interesting fragments and entrances into the story so any individual mind can put something of their own together. I really want to encourage imagination.”

Hildebrand draws inspiration from the beauty of her west coast surrounding while addressing social issues of her town, her own life and the world at large. Lately, her focus is water issues like privatization and flooding.

Surreal landscapes with decorative hills painted with herringbone and floral textile patterns (a “hangover” from a recent project where she painted quilts), houses, flags, boats and an often unpredictable sky, abound throughout “natural fantastical worlds” one might find within a dream.

Hildebrand has created “story maps,” the locations of stories that will send the viewer off on a journey. Elements of collage sing through the work, adding texture, detail and leading the eye around the canvas.

Trader Time depicts a city on the brink of being flooded, a warning perhaps that echoes Hildebrand’s concerns with water. Empty word bubbles allow the viewer to figure out their own explanation.

“I really hope that the paintings open a window of experience for people with which to lay their own feelings.”

http://www.canadianinterviews.com/interviews/index.php?ID=378

date of interview: 10/02/2010

location: hollander york gallery, toronto on

MEGHAN HILDEBRAND with Canadian interviews

http://www.canadianinterviews.com/interviews/index.php?ID=378

Date of Interview: 10/02/2010
Location: Hollander York Gallery, Toronto ON

"happy as colours" WITH patrick iberi, maple tree literary review

h ttp://www.mtls.ca/issue6/art.php

April 2010

"art evokes enchanted childhood" WITH robert amos, times colonist

may 10, 2009

Dab Gallery is in Dragon Alley, just off Fisgaard Street, deep in China Town. The live/work condos there are a recent development of an ancient tenement. The charming gallery is the ground floor of one, and is smaller than most living rooms. There I saw Meghan Hildebrand's mixed media paintings, and spoke with the artist about her childhood.

"It was magic!" she remembered. Meghan Hildebrand grew up in Whitehorse in the Yukon. her mother, Dereen Hildebrand, was a "jack-of-all-trades-" artist who, as a teenager, left Victoria.

She got an enriched education in the 1970s at the Kootenay school of the Arts in Nelson and traveled to the Yukon. The first five years of Meghan life were spent with her mom in a little trailer.

"It was beautiful. I have had an easel as long as I can remember. We painted murals on the doors. How my mom managed a sign-painting business out of the trailer I can't imagine", Hildebrand mused.

Hildebrand recalls the Yuko as "totally gorgeous." She grew up in a circle that included artists Ted Harrison, Jim Robb and many others. As soon as she graduated from high school, Meghan lit out for Vancouver with all the money she had - enough to last about two weeks.

When the money ran out she returned home and made a more enduring plan: to attend Kootenay School of the Arts. During four years there she developed rapidly; in her "mixed media" course there were just six students and three instructors. Graduating in 2001, she launched herself into the world, ready to become a full-time artist.

Her firs stop was Fran Willis Gallery in Victoria. Early one Monday morning she set out with her portfolio, only to discover that art galleries typically aren't open Mondays. Nevertheless, she was taken up by the gallery.

Even then her style was identifiable. She starts wit ha wooden panel and builds up a foundation of acrylic paint and collage, using paper elements like brushstrokes. These she cuts into shapes, distinct )buildings, animals, petals, birds) or freely indistinct. Oil glazes tie together this bouillabaisse of imagery with nicely judged tone and colour.

Hildebrand and her fiancé discovered Powell River five years ago and took to it right away. She like being a "big fish" in a small community, "staying home and doing the stuff we want to do." To make that way of life work, she takes every exhibiting opportunity - grocery store, artists' co-op and her own gallery in the basement of their home. "We are trying to create the scene we want to be in," she noted. "Living in Powell River is kind of like a vacation."

I asked her for some insight into the charming and complex images on the walls around us. She describes them as imaginary places, "Our footprints - the shapes we leave in the world" Each ebullient collage seems to erupt at the intersection of the natural worlds and industrial reality. She builds fantasy cities like castles in the air; she calls them "almost dreamscapes."

For me they evoke St. Petersburg, the leaning tower of Pisa, Manhattan and Vancouver's West End. Hildebrand said she prefers to keep things ambivalent, "to fit into anyone's memory." She starts with nothing and builds up a lot of free-floating imagery, defining what turns up as she goes along.

Using her scissors, she snips out all manner of animals and birds to paste into the environment she creates. "Birds tell such great stories," she laughed. I asked her about the many galloping horses - or were they coyotes or deer rabbits? She said they were "animal shapes", purposely left open for people to define them as they wish.

Hildebrand's paintings are attractive from a distance and become more and more interesting as one approaches. She calls them "doorways to places." What sort of places?

"A couch on a porch," she replied. "That cozy place where my mom and I were," so many years ago. It's a pleasure to go there with her.