Soft Bodied Oddities

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Corri-Lynn Tetz, “Gemini,” 2019

oil on canvas, 30” x 30” (courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary; photo by Laura Findlay)

Soft Bodied Oddities is a fitting title for a two-person show on view at Jarvis Hall Gallery in Calgary until Jan. 18. With new oil paintings by artists Laura Findlay and Corri-Lynn Tetz, it explores empowerment and loss through romanticized images of both nature and the female body. 

Tetz was born in Calgary and now lives in Montreal. She regularly explores the female form within the landscape, creating paintings that mix references to Romanticism with popular or lowbrow contemporary sources. For this series, she used pornography from the 1980s to subvert and reinterpret the female form. Despite these roots, the work is surprisingly chaste, yet still luscious and softly romantic.

Rather than posturing seductively, female subjects, dressed or semi-naked, are captured in moments of self-reflection. The cold exploitive quality typically found in pornography has been softened through a sensual layering of soft washes and delicate strokes of paint. 

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Corri-Lynn Tetz, “Swan,” 2019

oil on canvas, 24” x 20” (courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary; photo by Laura Findlay)

For example, in Gemini, we see twin redheads (or is that a mirror image?) with their eyes closed. Hot-pink tops are pulled up, revealing breasts. Their porcelain skin is translucent and barely rendered, while hair and clothes are lushly crafted.

Here, as in other works, Tetz’s painterly marks are voluptuous yet blurry. Her colours range from softly muted to lush and vivacious. Three monochromatic paintings, hung as a group, range from hot violet to grassy green and sky blue. Each contains a partially nude or dressed woman within a landscape or a domestic setting that features a landscape element. While the paintings at first seem voyeuristic, our gaze is shifted to introspection and self-agency. 

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Laura Findlay, “August,” 2019

oil on board, 23” x 21” (courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary; photo by Laura Findlay)

The gaze takes on a different meaning in Findlay’s paintings. Findlay, based in Toronto, creates eerie nightscapes populated with flying daisies, dancing spiders and a glowing moth. She lays dark pigments over fluid, pale under-paintings and also applies and removes areas of paint using solvents, creating delicate transparencies and rich opacities. This meticulous process builds scenes rife with dark shadows, watery reflections and luminous gestures. 

The flowers and insects that inhabit Findlay’s worlds are sensual yet strangely funereal. They come to life but seem haunted, almost ghostly. For example, August reveals how a flowerbed might glimmer at night, but also how it might look in the afterlife or on a faraway planet. These effects are both captivating and unnerving.

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Laura Findlay, “Night Daisies,” 2019

oil on gessoed paper, 17” x 13” (courtesy of Jarvis Hall Gallery, Calgary; photo by Laura Findlay)

Such conflicts are mirrored in other works, such as Wink, with its mutated arrangement of daisies, and in Night Daisies, where a sky-borne fleet of daisies makes its way to the heavens or, maybe, outer space.

Both artists create paintings that promise other worlds and beg for intimate viewing. While their subject matter is vastly different, they share an affinity for using Romanticism and the sensuality of paint to transform found imagery into otherworldly apparitions. ■

Soft Bodied Oddities is on view at the Jarvis Hall Gallery in Calgary from Nov. 22, 2019 to Jan. 18, 2020.

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