Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 2 - 5 PM

Molecules in Heat #6, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 ", 2022

MARIE LANNOO - Artist Statement

Since the beginning of COVID in 2020, I returned to canvas for the first time in 25 years with a tremendous level of freedom. I could never have predicted that a global pandemic with the ensuing lockdown would have opened the floodgates in the studio. In the best works, decision-making has been entirely intuitive with direct and unfiltered connection to the painting. It is difficult to describe this place other than to say it is where I make the most profound connection with my materials and with my artistic self to embody those connections in the work. When I am in this place of deep connection and feeling, time dissolves and slips away. The works in Light Fields were painted during this period of intense focus.

I use colour to pierce and punctuate. Colour becomes a portal of heat, a beacon of light and a direct conduit to sensation - a vaccine to inoculate against sensory deprivation. The paintings are meditations through palette and compositional devices. They are stripped to essentials in the centre with the most painterly activity on the periphery. The viewer gets lost inside the painting and transported to another place. 

The paintings are sized to facilitate intimate and personal contact through direct, experiential connection. Colour vibrates, pulsates, resonates, radiates. The radiant energy of colour creates sensations of experience as light interacts with each layer of transparent acrylic to change its luminosity. As the layers interact, overall illumination is revealed.