Upcoming

Opening reception Saturday, April 20, 2 - 5 pm
Artist in attendance

Verna Vogel builds these paintings with surface textures stitched into the canvas, over which she applies layers of translucent and opaque colour. Her methods reflect the intricate nature of the city, which evolves in layers over time, and in which each detail is important for a balanced functioning of the whole.

tin-tin-nab-u-la-tion n. The ringing, jingling or tinkling sound of bells.

In the inner ear, there are tiny hairs which vibrate in response to sound waves, part of a process which transmits sound to the brain, allowing it to register, filter and define sounds. This, as we all know, is called “hearing”.

Over time, the hearing process changes. Gradually, some of those tiny hairs are no longer able to stop vibrating, and will continue to vibrate even in a complete absence of sound. The speed at which this change happens is directly influenced by how much sound - how many decibels and for how long - the ears are exposed to. The brain registers these unchecked vibrations as a kind of electric buzzing or bell-like ringing noise.

For many years, Verna Vogel lived in a 14th floor flat and worked in a 5th floor studio, both located in the downtown core. Now she lives and works in a house in the suburbs. This series of paintings is her tintinnabulation, a visual echo of her late experience of urban immersion.

I am drawn to the stillness of often forgotten urban landscapes – to lines and layers of convergence. Personal histories are embedded within place. The bones of an urban landscape contain echoes of the past, and house the ‘Blueprints’ of memory. My studies of ‘Urban Blueprints’ are excavations that draw into the inner structure of place; they are layered with thought; they open in the act of paint and line.

~ Amy Dryer, 2013