Lyse Lemieux: Painted Drawings

Artist’s figurative work continues to bend genres, but shows a new interest in colour.

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Vancouver artist Lyse Lemieux’s genre-bending figurative drawings, which her gallerist, Wil Aballe, calls paintings, continue to defy boundaries. 

All the elements one expects from Lemieux, a mid-career artist who won the VIVA Award for outstanding achievement from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation in 2017, are evident in her exhibition of 33 works on paper at Aballe’s new gallery on Vancouver’s East Hastings Street. That means ovoid shapes, ink lines, bits of ribbon, felt and painted paper cutouts (Lemieux draws with her scissors) and, of course, paint. 

But there’s one notable difference. Lemieux’s typical palette of black and white, seen in her Full Frontal exhibition at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery in 2018 and in the large monochromatic wall paintings in A Girl’s Gotta Do What A Girl’s Gotta Do at the Richmond Art Gallery in 2016, make way for an expressive use of colour in this show.  

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Lyse Lemieux, “L’Avenir est long; A Conversation,” 2018

Lyse Lemieux, “L’Avenir est long; A Conversation,” 2018

acrylic, gesso and industrial wool felt on Arches 300lb paper, 60” x 40” (photo by Mike Love, courtesy of the artist and Wil Aballe Art Projects)

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Lyse Lemieux, “L’Avenir est long; A Conversation” (detail), 2018

Lyse Lemieux, “L’Avenir est long; A Conversation” (detail), 2018

acrylic, gesso and industrial wool felt on Arches 300lb paper, 60” x 40” (photo by Mike Love, courtesy of the artist and Wil Aballe Art Projects)

Yes, L’Avenir est long; A Conversation, shown on the show’s promotional postcard, depicts two ovoidal figures in black and white, but they are set amid coloured triangles against an orange background. Lemieux often uses ovoids to represent the human form. The elongated triangles suggest tongues wagging in heated conversation. “Her colour decisions are very beautiful,” says Aballe. “I particularly like her use of yellow highlighting around the triangles and the broken black border.”

Lemieux, known for balancing representation and abstraction, surprises with a number of cartoonish images. In another work in the L’Avenir est long series, this one subtitled Une Mère et ses enfants, she draws two round heads poking above the edge of a baby pram next to what looks like a draped curtain. Each face has distinct features and round circles for cheeks. On closer inspection, the folds of the curtain suggest the head and breasts of a mother. The combination of pathos and humour has a disquieting effect.

Another piece, L’Avenir est long; Upside Down. Thinking, is dominated by two legs with an inverted head at the end of one foot, as if the ankle is also a neck. The other leg is very hirsute. Its foot wears a woman’s shoe and a vividly striped sock. 

“There is a lot of recurring imagery of legs,” says Aballe, adding that on Lemieux’s recent trip to Venice, she sent her friends photographs of people’s legs instead of images of the art or historic buildings.

Also surprising is the diversity of the artist’s references. The works variously employ modernist colours, pop culture elements, dreamscapes and Greek mythology. Regarding the latter, there are several works depicting what Lemieux refers to as Naiad figures, including The Birth of Naiads, composed of eight ovoidal figures that echo the shape of sperm. 

Painted Drawings is definitely evidence of a fertile mind at work and play. ■

Lyse Lemieux: Painted Drawings is on view at Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver from June 6 to July 20, 2019.

Wil Aballe

1375 Railspur Alley, Vancouver, British Columbia V6H 3R7

778-229-3458

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