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I'm pleased to announce that some of my small works are now becoming available online at the Saatchi Art Gallery. Follow my page and learn about new listings as they become available. Click on the painting image and read a description about the work's inspiration and it's materials. If you have ever been curious about my studio, you can see a few photos of my 'happy place' on my profile page. If you have any questions about any of these works, please feel free to ask me.   August 22 – Sept 3, 2023
LESLIE GROVE GALLERY 1158 Queen Street East, Toronto OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, August 24, 2023 – 6-8 pm Join us IN-PERSON at the Leslie Grove Gallery. See the show, meet the artists, bring a friend! ABOUT CONTINUUM The 2018 Artscape Gibraltar Point Residency accepted 2 artists for a week of immersive art. 2019 they traveled to Toronto Island with 3 more artists from various art disciplines. 2020 the world changed. 7 artists postponed the island residency. When plans were upended these determined artists committed themselves to finding inspiration via Zoom to see/talk about what they had done during their at-home residency week. A plan was then hatched to challenge each other biweekly. Each artist showed art in their medium; the remaining 6 responded in their voice with a piece in their medium, or an experimental medium outside their style, inspired by the prompt. It wasn’t long before we became the 7 Works Collective. The excitement during lock downs was to listen to each artist describe their process/thinking behind the work from the challenge, including showing preliminary sketches/experiments. As we are not all painters, we learned about other mediums, which was a big feature of our Zoom discussions. 7 Works Collective is paint, embroidery, mosaic, fibre and lens based art. The upending of our residency became the possibilities of creativity in a continuum. Featured Artists: Kathryn Spooner Bossy, Mario Cerroni, Lynn Dubinsky, Catherine Gutsche, Karen Wynne Mackay, Judi Miller, Jo-ann Zorzi.  I am thrilled to announce my "News Blues" solo exhibition at the Sivarulrasa Gallery in Almonte. This show begins July 7 and will be on until August 11. Please join me at the gallery on July 15th from 2pm to 4pm.
For information about the show and the gallery please visit: sivarulrasa.com In this body of work, the I am drawing on observations from life over the past four years, in particular, the pandemic. The title of the show “News Blues” derives from the feeling of watching from a distance as events passed by. Participation not being a viable option, we sat back and absorbed events as they were presented from third parties. This unwilling restriction forced me to rely on images and events that presented themselves in my local neighbourhood, the news, and my memory. TOAF exclusively online is now live for purchasing. Have a look, select your favourite and make it your own!!! If you are in the Ottawa area you can arrange to pick up your purchase and save on shipping. But if you are in Australia, you can still make your favourite your own and have it shipped. To learn more about the significance of each piece's place in the 7 Works Collective project go to: 7workscollective.weebly.com/  June was the month of prep work for the 7 Works Collective's participation in the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair (TOAF) exclusively online exhibition. There was the work of selecting the pieces that we would display on the TOAF.ca website and gathering the details for each work - remembering that we could not duplicate the works that were to be in the Leslie Grove gallery in August(stay tuned for details). Then two of us needed to learn about the uploading process for the website. With great excitement all the parts came together and we went live for previewing in June. Now anticipation builds towards the go live date for the fair. Keep watching this spot for more details very soon! In 2018, I applied to the Gibraltar Point Artscape Artist Residency program and was accepted to the residency along with my friend and fellow artist, Karen Wynne Mackay. Both of us were so inspired by the experience of immersing ourselves in our art practices for a concentrated time, we applied again in 2019. Both of us were again accepted and traveled to Toronto Island in May along with three other artist friends from various art disciplines. Then along came 2020 with great plans to add two additional artists to the group and again spend an awesome week on Toronto Island. BUT... the world changed in 2020 and we had to postpone our artist residency until 2021. Even though the best laid plans were upended the group committed themselves to creative activities during that week in May and furthered our hunts for inspiration by meeting on Zoom to see each other and talk about what we had done that week. Since then we are known as the 7 Works Collective and we still meet regularly on Zoom and are beginning to host exhibitions together. In 2021, with extreme covid restrictions, we managed to attend the residency with our extended group. With covid still raging in 2022 we chose to skip that year. But in 2023, with renewed spirits and supplies in hand, we hopped the train this time and had an amazingly beautiful week of fabulous weather and renewed inspirations. Our schedules usually began with solo walks to the beach, returning to the shared kitchen for breakfast, then off to our studios for some heads down creation. Periodically through the day, if a studio door was open we'd pop in for a chat and coffee, then back to the work at hand until lunch, followed by more work occasionally punctuated by a spin on our vintage rental bikes. At the end of the day, we would gather and pick an island restaurant for our evening meal after which we might finish up a studio idea then gather in one studio to chat about the day's work. Always interesting and always inspiring. This new series "Melodies and Motion", examines the rhythmic movements throughout history that have been part of human existence since its origins, taking the forms of music, dance and rituals that combine both music and movement. In Melodies and Motion, I examine this bonding within communities through the wispy, thin lines created with wire, embellished with sparks of colour, using coloured anodized aluminum, threaded though the wire constructions. These strips of coloured metal symbolize the dancer or dancers as they move in sync to the music as illustrated by the wires. I am translating the expressive physical art form of dance into a secondary static expression that embodies the choreographed motion of dancers and musicians. Music and dance performance has swung throughout history from free form celebratory individual/independent motions to restricted “immoral” dancing to formalized costumed and staged entertainment. As a visual artist I never create without music playing in the background. I am convinced this influences the outcome of my work’s aesthetic ideas and emotions and connects subtly to my audience when in this series.
 MEET CATHERINE GUTSCHE ON CANVASREBEL
I was honoured to be interviewed by the folks at CAVASREBEL this month. So many questions that made me really sit down an reflect on my path as an artist from the early years to today. I hope that you learn a few new things about me and my art. Some surprises may be revealed. "We were lucky to catch up with Catherine Gutsche recently and have shared our conversation below.Catherine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally. As with many artists, I knew I wanted to be an artist from a very early age. My first memory of a creative endeavour was the creation of a paper bag puppet at summer day camp. It is crazy to think that I bought my very first computer by making puppets and selling them at craft fairs later in life. As for knowing that I would be an artist professionally that process started in junior high school when I was desperate to know how to get into art schools. I think the guidance counsellors thought I was pushing it, I was only in grade 8, I had lots of time to figure it out. But I wanted to know I was on the right path." Continuum : a range or series of things that are slightly different from each other and that exist between two different possibilities. April, 2023 at Centre Culturel Le Chenail Cultural Centre 2 rue John St., Hawkesbury, ON K6A 1X3 [email protected] www.lechenail1975.com 613.632.9555 Meet the artists: Friday March 31, 4-8pm Enjoy some wine & cheese along with live music. blairmackaymusic.com  Continuum uses collaborative art to explore the boundaries of abstract painting, collage, embroidery, mosaic, silk fibre drawing and photography to create cohesive but distinct works of art from a single inspiration/starting point. These techniques are used individually, and in combination, to create variations on a theme, all inspired by the prompt.
In our selected collaborative piece, a chosen photograph will be divided into six numbered sections - each artist interpreting an assigned section. There will be freedom to create a piece, solely based on the photograph section with minimal group discussion. The interpretations will then be assembled by section, to hang as a whole. Each artists’ techniques will be merged on a single canvas or chosen support to create a continuous integration of styles. The decision to have no restrictions in sizes and spacing is deliberate, adding another element to the whole. The creative and technical elements contribute to its unique characteristics. When working with a single artist’s challenge or prompt we allow for in-depth discussions of the prompt, progress reports and “show and tell” - over Zoom and at our annual Artscape Gibraltar Point artists residency. The creative outcomes over the last 3 years (soon to be 4 years) have reflected world thoughts and attitudes, personal feelings and escapes. And always with a nod to the artistic continuum. The year has begun with me experimenting with another sculptural avenue. I acquired some colourful anodized aluminum sheets, thin enough to cut by hand and gently bend by hand. Expanding on my wire work where I added some splash of colour, I moved quickly into small sculptures entirely made from the aluminum. The first few attempts were failures due to my lack of cutting skills but I feel that I am now mastering better control and have a diamond file to smooth out imperfections. I'm still interested in expressing movement, freezing it as it is seen in a fleeting moment. In the case of the work with flat surfaces, I'm feeling that these look very much like dancers. Sometimes a single dancer and sometimes a couple synchronized in their motion. I also discovered that some of my impromptu sketchbook work is also reflecting lines and shapes in motion. |
