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a r t i c l e s :

Jonathan Forrest and Nancy Lowry

Nancy Lowry, "Woods, Emma",
oil on board 24 x 24 in. August 2001

Nancy Lowry is a young Saskatoon artist working out of a history of landscape painting. She participated in the Landscape 98 workshop, organised by the Mendel Art Gallery, working with such artists as Greg Hardy and Lorenzo Dupuis. Her work has echoes of Tom Thompson and David Milne as well as a younger generation of painters including Clint Hunker and David Alexander. It is indeed a rich past to work from and it is a sign of Nancy's intelligence that, while she admires these artists' work, she does not paint in awe of them.

I sense a more playful approach in Nancy's work that allows her to use this tradition as a springboard towards her own expression and ideas--an approach tempered by her interest in other painters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Anselm Kiefer.

Nancy is a contemporary painter growing out of a painting tradition--and "growing" is the key here. Unlike many admirers of the landscape tradition, she is not imitating but rather is expressing and moving her art forward.

I have been aware of Nancy's work for the last couple of years, seeing the occasional piece here and there, but it wasn't until last summer (August 2001), when Nancy attended the Emma Lake Artist's Workshop, that I really began to see what she was up to. (Many of the paintings in this exhibition were made during this workshop.) I saw Nancy working in her studio space and at her easel outside, getting the landscape down onto her canvas and board, using her own brand of "en plein air" painting.

What struck me was the direct, quirky quality to her drawing...you might say it's even a little bit awkward. Or maybe a better way to put it would be to say that it has character. The same is true of her colour sense and paint application. In fact, it's amazing what she can pack into those little 8x10 boards with flat areas of odd colour, eccentric drawing, unusual shape placement, and matter-of-fact paint handling using a sample smattering of painterly effects. It's obvious she likes poking around with this "stuff" of art --PAINT!

In the end, regardless of what history or tradition she works from, Nancy's paintings hang on the wall with power and authenticity and are deeply moving visual objects.

Jonathan Forrest, December 2001

"Artists by Artists - Jonathan Forrest & Nancy Lowry", exhibition essay for the Mendel Art Gallery, 2002.