Kim Rempel's Glorious Abstracts

 

 Kim Rempel with two of her super new abstracts 
at Gallery M in Cambridge
 at the opening tonight.

You're not supposed to jump up and down in an art gallery,
a rule I had to remind myself to follow tonight.  Why?
I've been following Kim Rempel's progress with her new
series of abstract paintings with both great curiosity and
pleasure.  Her photos on her blog are wonderful.  But in
person her paintings are pure dynamite.  I could have
happily spent hours staring at them, and most definitely
wanted to whoop with joy at their beauty.

 In these paintings Kim used her materials in an exciting
way.  Paint was thin, and then thick and in places she had
drawn with charcoal right over the paint leaving a deliberate
line, and sometimes a fainter more tentative line for the
viewer.  All of the abstracts are a cohesive unit -- looking
like bright pieces of colour, jewelry, or space creatures,
forming, shifting moving under the direction of their
expert creator.

Luckily Steven was there and the other guests at Kim's
opening in a group show at Gallery M in Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada tonight.  So I tried to control my
enthusiasm.  But if you happen to be in Cambridge
check out her work, and read more about it on her
blog: Eat, Drink, Paint.

Kim and I met through blogging, and showed together
at the International Women Celebrate show at Ayrspace
in Ayr, Ontario in 2011. She did not know I was
coming to the show and was happily surprised (I think)
when I arrived.  Happy smiles all round.

Two bloggers at the opening.

Have a seeing-the-great-things-your-friends-are-doing day.

More from Pops

 

 A great day on the farm
W.W. Muir

Oil on board

16 x 20 inches

(date unknown)

Much as I love my father now, in retrospect I didn't
know him very well, the way children know their
parents today.  He'd been brought up in a formal
environment, and although we ate meals together,
and as a young adult I loved his humour, I
did not have the kind of closeness with him that
I might have enjoyed today.  But looking at his paintings
the other day when I visited my mother in Ottawa,
I noticed such a joyful, and playful spirit in his
work that I felt the closeness to him that I
feel when I look at paintings by some of the greats
like Monet and Mary Cassatt, who I only know
through reading and seeing their work.

The painting by my father I'm featuring today is of
our little farm in Flesherton, Ontario.  My Dad only
owned the farm for a year, but he really loved it,
and that spirit is evident in this joyous painting.

Have a loving-the-people-in-your-past day.
P.S.  When I say formal, I do mean formal.
We frequently called our father, "father" and
only started calling him Daddy as young adults.
It was a big deal when my father started wearing
jeans on the weekend in the last few years of
his life.  A sea change.