Plucking the Strings

×

Expand

Pat O’Hara, “Spring,” 2016

acrylic on panel with resin, 24” x 48”

Pat O’Hara’s exhibition at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver is called Linearity and it’s easy to see why. Her  painting Spring, like other works in the show, which runs from Jan. 7 to Jan. 18, is composed largely of vertical – or roughly vertical – lines.

Expand

Pat O’Hara, “Balance II,” 2016

acrylic on panel with resin, 20” x 60”

O’Hara says she starts with an under-painting to create depth and then adds the lines by dragging strings covered in acrylic paint across the surface. She has worked with the motif before, but in this series the colours are bold and the lines assertive. 

O’Hara is excited by the paintings, particularly a final resin coating that the gallery suggested to give the work greater luminosity. “It looks like glass over the paintings,” she says. “It just gives it a whole new life.”

×

Expand

Pat O’Hara, “Grassfire,” 2016

acrylic on canvas, 24” x 72”

O’Hara grew up in Vancouver and attended what is now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She started showing at the Bau-Xi in 1984, a few years after she graduated. Now 80, O'Hara still paints every day in her studio, atop her home in Point Grey.

She wants her paintings to give people pleasure. “I hope it’s something they can look at and look at again and find new surprises.”