Extraordinary Journey Series, Indigo, 72” x 53”, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas
“A typical McGivern painting vibrates with barely restrained energy. Boldly composed and lushly saturated with color, her canvases, whether figurative abstract, embellished with Swarovski crystals, inspired by the colors and shapes of the landscape, or just pure abstraction, have a glimmering quality that radiates beauty. Her use of gold-leaf squares allows the artist to paint over it, drip paint on it, or cover it up completely and start over, as if nothing ever happened. Wafer thin, these golden squares magically applied by the artist to her canvases in a myriad of disguises - a venerable skill she has mastered - adds an empowering element to her work—an extreme richness that no other material comes close to equaling. Such is the artistry of Canadian based painter Barbara McGivern. ”
“The linguistic autonomy remains one of the fundamental characteristics of Barbara’s work, experimenting new techniques, has brought to light a new dimension in her paintings- multicoloured layers and every colour has been placed instinctively, portraying an interior world that the Artist explores guided by a sense light. Every view, every figure, becomes a discovery to break down the barriers between double and triple size, its production is informal meditated and conscious to express its values and its strong emotions in the face of the vicissitudes of life, Barbara knows how to give colour to sentiment, creating dense shades and vibrant with combinations courageous and bold adventures: there is clearly a descriptive element,a surreal poetic invention, painting becomes essentially colour that absorbs its intensity in a lucid and lyrical sense of vision, the players lose all their natural connotation to become feelings, imagination and memory!” ”
THE MIDAS BRUSH
By Jennifer Lee
LUSH MAGAZINE
According to Chinese belief, gold - the first sacred element of Feng Shui - gives the gift of longevity and prosperity. For Barbara McGivern, a frequent tourist of China, the blessed metal has done just that. Empowering her paintings with its richness of colour and texture, gold leaf has become McGivern's artistic signature. "I have fun with gold," says McGivern. Ignoring its monetary value, McGivern considers only the artistic worth of the gold leaf she uses, purchased through Germany via Eytzinger Gold Leaf Company. "I don't use gold as being precious, I don't think of it as anything more than what a jar of paint would cost me." Indeed, like paint, the opulent metal comes in every colour of the rainbow. McGivern's palette alone holds 24 karat yellow gold, red gold, lemon gold and moon gold -- made from 22 karat gold and platinum to prevent tarnishing. With such colour sensibilities, it's no wonder McGivern's canvases sometimes have up to $3,000 of gold painted on. For McGivern, who is fascinated by its immutable quality, gold is "a necessity". Coined the "Gold Lady" by restauranteurs who've marvelled at McGivern's quirky taste for a touch of edible gold in her champagne, McGivern's unusual, albeit, luxurious, pallete has earned her drink and her name a place on the cocktail menu at London's Capital Hotel, know as the Lady B. Her luxurious work has caught the eye of numerous high profile clients, including various royals such as His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Crown Prince of Dubai, and the Defence Minister of the United Arab Emirates. She has created 22 paintings for the Emirates Tower Hotel, and her work is featured in galleries in Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
At the time we spoke, McGivern was wavering between stopping in London or Frankfurt on her upcoming trip to Dubai, her fourth of the year. While travel has favoured her with artistic vision, inspiration-seeking travel is not on McGivern's agenda. "It just comes," she says, without panning or hunting -- if the inspiration is there, she will find it, and paint it. One of McGivern's most memorable trips was her intimate excursion through the deserts in 1996 where she followed the footsteps of the great British explorer Wilfred Thesiger. She traversed across the deserts of Oman, the Empty Quarter and the United Arab Emirates, soaking in the "colours and the shapes and the shadows and everything else about the desert." When she returned home, the golden colour of the desert sand stayed fresh in her memory. McGivern dug out of a box containing sheets of gold leaf, purchased almost a year before. She had experimented with gold leaf in some of her previous works but as she explains, "I never really used it very much because I was still doing the other sort of style," referring to the geometric abstract paintings, and figurative art seen in her Barnes collection, its namesake baring the eccentric American art collector Alfred Barnes. "When I came back, I just started painting totally differently." McGivern recollects how at first she was conservative and hesitant in her use of the delicate gold leaf, going from using "a very little bit of gold and then more gold," while now she may cover the whole canvas in gold and paint over it.
Artistically, gold is an obvious 'necessity' in McGivern's evocative Extraordinary Journey collection, the child of her desert romp. "I paint over it, I finger paint over it, I scratch over it, and I drip over it." The paintings in the collection seem to sigh with breaths of gold. Never ostentatious in its presentation, squares of gold seep through McGivern's brilliant reds -- reds she saw in the desert's "heat and the passion of its people," transcribed in Promise and Spring For Jena. Powerful and vibrant with emotion, yellow gold carves illumination onto a black canvas in Black Ribbon, ducking under strokes of blues, reds and greens. Even paintings done predominantly in darker shades are far from "black and depressing."
Very often McGivern doesn't use anything to record a present moment but instead relies on her memories. Presented with the diverse splendour of the global landscape, McGivern can often see "images forming in [her] head." She memorizes her surroundings, for a later date and a blank canvas. Mental snap-shots have included the sand-swept Oman "overlooking the Indian Ocean", the southern cities of Patagonia with their scenery of "glaciers, mountains and logging camps", and the dunes of Dubai, a land she fell in love with back when McGivern and clearly the sights it has lent are indispensable to her artistic creations.
Barbara McGivern tends to be recognised and remembered wherever she goes. Basel is no exception despite being teeming with artists this time of year.
At the recent Art Dubai she shared a glass of celebratory Champagne with a local art dealer over the sale of two of her large paintings, but not before dropping a few pieces of gold leaf in each glass, explaining that "it's good for arthritis," then taking a sip.
In Basel the Toronto and Dubai-based artist just heard a maître d’hôtel demand a table be secured as quickly as possible for The Gold Lady.
McGivern, whose signature style and technique do something very unique with the precious metals on her canvases, probably deserves the moniker. Equal parts Metaphysics and alchemy, her work vibrates with a barely restrained energy.
Her work is recognised and renowned for its notable richness of colour and vibrant contrasts, a result of evocative choices of colour and her trademark use of gold and platinum leaf, supplied in generous amounts by Eytzinger Gold of Germany.
“ I paint over it, drip paint on it and sometimes cover it up completely because I did not like the painting and start over...there are many paintings out there with layers of gold under them...but you cannot melt the gold down as it is so fine and wafer thin....but I could never use anything else but real gold. "
Gold is so much a part of Barbara’s oeuvre that several of her favourite establishments on her world travels serve a cocktail christened the Lady“B” – comprised of a flute of Champagne and chips of edible gold leaf. Dubai’s venerable Rib Room is also set to produce a rare honour – Barbara McGivern cutlery.
Barbara McGivern’s work can be found in galleries internationally, including Edmonton’s Lando Gallery and at Art Basel 2012.
WINTER 2004 Conversations in Shape and Colour:
Barbara McGivern and Arthur Potts
January 10 — February 22, 2004
Reception: Sunday, January 11, 2:00 — 4:00 p.m.
Barbara McGivern joins Arthur Potts in an exhibition of abstract painting with its origin in the landscape. For Toronto artist Barbara McGivern, a 1997 driving trip through the deserts of the Mid East set the colour and scope of her art. We experience the light and the vastness through her eyes. Layering her colours to create the reddest red or the bluest of blues McGivern creates a landscape of brilliant colour accented with defining squares of gold leaf. She incorporates the square as a device for reducing nature to its most basic shapes. We feel the abyss flicker, float and fall. These confident landscapes mesmerize the viewer with their apparent simplicity and the longer they are viewed, develop into deeper layers of understanding. McGivern studied at the Ontario College of Art and The Toronto School of Art. Among her accomplishments, she has twice been invited to participate in the Florence, Italy, Biennale Internazionelle Dell’Arte Contemporanea.
Arthur Potts also reaps a strong sense of colour and atmosphere from his travels, particularly in Spain. His paintings are poised between the emotion captured in his colour and form and the recognition of his paintings by the viewer as landscapes. He uses a high horizon that strips the painting space across the top of the picture plane, forming a plateau. The work is accomplished through Pott’s first hand experience of a place and his translation of it through personalized colour and a distinctive deliberate application of the paint. Arthur Potts who paints from his Cambridge, Ontario studio, studied at the Instituto Allende San Miguel, Mexico. He later found that studio classes taken with painter John Hartman held particular relevance and encouragement for him.
Both artists have a concern for space and natural phenomena. The influences from their individual travels provide them with a record of a variety of images. While both artists are interested in the saturation of colour, the contrasts in their paintings become evident as the individuality of their perceptions become unavoidable.
This exhibition is sponsored by the Ontario Arts Council.
