 Blanketed (19-010) Peter Gynd oil, acrylic, marker, coloured pencil on canvas, 27.25" x 39.25"; SOLD Exhibited at Village West in Slow Art Fall 2019 |
The Blanket Series is a multi-year body of work exploring landscape, culture and nationalism through a narrative built on works featuring blanketed figures in both natural and constructed environments.
The work is an exploration of landscape as identity and how it relates to both the individual and to culture. This relationship becomes mediated through the blankets which cloak or veil the figures. While the blanketed forms in the photos responds directly to each location, there is both in an attempt by the figures to connect and engage with the scene, but also to impose their presence onto the landscape.
The paintings take these questions to a more abstract and symbolic level, pairing down actual landscape into symbols: a horizontal line represents landscape; a box with an "X" is symbolic of time, space, home, and nationalistic identity; and the raw canvas is symbolic of ground - both in terms of painting and of earth. The patterned backgrounds reference world textiles and the language that often exists within patterns to describe elements of a landscape. Water - represented by a circular, dripping pool, lake, bowl, or puddle-references purity, cleansing, and the passage of time; the slow but powerful shaper of landscape.
The Blanket Series began with a desire to explore a cultural connection to landscape. Being first generation Canadian and an artist involved with landscape I started questioning my place in the world and my own cultural connection to a place. This questioning soon expanded into an international exploration with works spanning painting, photography, textiles and video.
The blanketed figures respond to their environments in modes of association, understanding, conquest, and imposition. The blankets—or in some cases the flag—introduce an inherent element of personal connection, protection, nostalgic longing, loss and cultural history and in an ongoing dialog between the individual and his search for a connection to place.
If you are interested in purchasing this work you can do so directly through the artist by contacting Peter Gynd or visit petergynd.com.