Teresa Posyniak: Ponderosa

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Teresa Posyniak, “Bark and Branches 1,” 2019

oil, cold wax, charcoal, pastels and collage on birch, diptych, 50” x 68" (courtesy of the artist)

A perennial challenge for contemporary artists who broach nature through figurative painting is how to bring something new to the table, how to embody criticality, and not just be seen as trading in sugar-coated, aestheticized representation. 

With Ponderosa, Calgary artist Teresa Posyniak adroitly navigates such territory, specifically our complex relationship with trees and her years-long research into a sentinel of both a geographical and environmental Great Divide: the ponderosa pine. 

The iconic tree, found across the continental Rockies and particularly on the arid slopes of British Columbia’s southern interior, is facing challenges related to our changing climate. From here, whether through intimate depictions of its scaly red bark, or large multi-panelled sectional views into stands of trees, Posyniak conjures both seduction and solicitude.

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Teresa Posyniak, “Tangled,” 2019

oil and cold wax on linen wrapped birch, 48” x 36” (courtesy of the artist)

Much of the value in this expansive body of work comes from Posyniak’s ability to craft a continuum spanning realism and abstraction, offering a spectrum of visions ranging from the lyrical intertwined branches of Tangled, to macro explorations of exposed trunks and beetle infestations as beguiling as they are unnerving.

Key to this exhibition, on view at the Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary until Oct. 12, is Posyniak’s collaboration with Nancy Holmes, a literary artist and award-winning researcher at UBC Okanagan. Her poems have lent their lexicon to each painting’s title. Just as notable is Holmes’ emotive essay, offering substance and point, tarrying with punk and pith.

“That centre of being, troubled, luminous and wordless, is what I bump up against as I look and look at Teresa’s paintings,” Holmes writes. “Like spiritual practices, these paintings are about encounter, about really seeing through the noise of everyday life.”

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Teresa Posyniak, “Orange and Ash,” 2019

oil and cold wax on linen wrapped birch, 48” x 36” (courtesy of the artist)

The most punctuating canvases, those that really contest the everyday noise to prick our inner senses, are where colour and light arrest the soul. Wild Torches II is one by way of meditative abstraction, while Orange and Ash offers a larger vision of illuminating figuration.

In many instances, what brings body to these canvases is the adept handling of oil paint and cold wax, yielding impressive impastos and a shifting ground for the sort of confident gestures that might actually overcome the deleterious effects of our collective disregard for trees.

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Teresa Posyniak, “Wild Torches II,” 2019

oil and cold wax on birch, 16” x 12” (courtesy of the artist)

For those unfamiliar with Posyniak’s practice, there’s more to this work than meets the eye. The commitment demonstrated in Ponderosa, based on ideals of nurturing the land, is built on decades of artful work in pursuit of both natural and social justice.

Her 1994 sculpture, Lest We Forget, permanently installed in the main foyer of the Law Building at the University of Calgary, is inscribed with scores of names of murdered women. It’s a disturbingly perspicacious precursor to the many monuments for missing and murdered Indigenous women now found across Canada.

And, later this fall and through the winter, visitors to the Art Gallery of Alberta will see more of Posyniak’s pressing art in Rebellious: Alberta Women Artists in the 1980s. As one of the province’s most senior artists, Posyniak knows that movements, whether environmentalism or Time’s Up, take courage and perseverance. 

As she said when we last met: “Play the long game.” ■

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Courtesy of the artists

Ponderosa is on view at the Christine Klassen Gallery in Calgary from Sept. 3 to Oct. 12, 2019.

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