Avis Rasmussen
Paintings: London to Stratford-on-Avon
November 7 – 27, 2010
At 2260 Oak Bay Avenue
Preview: Saturday November 6, 2010 10-5:30 pm
OPENING RECEPTION
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 7, 2010 1PM-5 PM
Avis Rasmussen in attendance
Elizabeth Ely, harpist; Karel Roessingh, pianist
Avis Rasmussen is a Victoria artist and print-maker of national significance who carries a West Coast narrative to her 'plein air' painting. Rasmussen completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction in painting in 1979, and her Masters in Art Education in 1982. She is a celebrated poet and has been advocating her whole life, for the arts community in Victoria through a variety of organizations and in her capacity as a mentor to a younger generation of artists. Rasmussen has won international status at the Pretoria International exhibition (2000); at the International School of Drawing, Painting, Sculpture exhibition in Montecastello di Vibio (2003), at an international exhibition in Hastings, New Zealand (2006). Her paintings are in collections, both public and private world-wide. Rasmussen attracts collectors with an interest in the narrative approach to colour and light which is atypical to how European 'old world' subjects are viewed with new patterns.
Rasmussen's London to Stratford-on-Avon paintingsresult fromtaking her eye to the country of her father's birthplace, arriving the day before the British Election. The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, to the London Eye, a huge Ferris wheel, London Bridge, tugs, barges, all along the embankment, then St Paul's Cathedral, Russell Square, its yellows in the frigid May air, Trafalgar Square, encircled with non-stop traffic, double decker buses, Nelson upon his column, the lions, the fountains – sights to the travelling North American artist with easel, oils, watercolours, panels and arrival at the painter's location. Pilgrimage to Stratford took Avis Rasmussen's London eye to Constable country, Salisbury Cathedral, where artists follow footsteps. At Stonehenge she found a bench to narrate in paint the view of the timeless stone circle.
In Oxford in the Great Park overlooking the spires and colleges she contemplated the narrative of family, and took Folly Bridge over the Isis [Thames], and Avis Rasmussen's tour became one of rivers, bridges, valley and monument. Stratford at last, the treatment of Shakespeare's Memorial Statue next to the Avon Locks is a parallel drawn between the 'old world' of canal and English investiture in the Bard. This is a personal journey with imitations one can see from Avis Rasmussen's first European trip in 1959, where she had visited her brother, John Bosher, in Marden Hill, this time in a vintage MG. How the landscape might have changed, yet she had come full circle into her own. And this might be how the Bard, himself, might have been compelled to remember: seen by Time's fell hand – defaced. Joy of all Joys, says Rasmussen, I was taken around the Cotswolds, painted the Chipping Camden Market town, later, Bourton-on-Water, footbridges over the Windrush River.
In the Barbican Hall, London again, being both an artist and a Canadian, she took in a superb concert with friends, for though this was a working tour for the painter, this was also a soul journey evoking in a persistent feeling, stirred in image and paint, in the spring hearing the thrill voices of the Hertfordshire Chorus. Perhaps remembering how the play begins, two households, both alike in dignity, the fair English countryside, or the city monument, the embankment, river and industry, this where a Canadian artist paints a scene. A journey made, the classic pilgrimage to see where ghost painters, now famous, walked. Through Avis Rasmussen's eye you can see how these places are distinguished in a completely refreshing way.
From Magdelen bridge over the Cherwell, or taking cover, free from spring showers, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, The British Museum – to the odd mile to Anne Hathaway's Cottage, perched on an outdoor Café seat painting Shakespeare's home, the connect between our two countries seems as strong as family, for Avis Rasmussen took her paint box, and the rarest sites are brought back with joy. Another life-long dream fulfilled, and interest from the passerby, whether inside the gate of Christ Church College, or from the front of Leaden Hall School with a vantage of Salisbury, not the classic Constable, but staying where he stayed, catching the architectural shapes under spring sunlight and shadow, with perhaps the meanderings, only an artist can feel, on the threshold of ancient Wessex.
Roland Rasmussen