Full Circle VII white Painting

"Blueprint" is a new series of acrylic paintings that evolved out of an ambitious public artwork the artist created for Great Gulf’s condominium development at the corner of Richmond East and Victoria streets in Toronto, Canada. Harvey discovered this was the site of a Beaux-Arts theatre designed in 1908 by Charles James Reid for vaudeville acts and the first silent films. Called Shea’s Victoria, its exterior was relatively modest while inside it was as ornate as the live-theatre houses of the same era, including the Elgin and Winter Garden around the corner on Yonge Street. Defined by a riot of curving shapes and colour-saturated lines, the paintings take their inspiration from the theatre’s original blueprints. They reveal such elaborate embellishments as a classical harp motif in stained glass above the ticket booth and wrought iron railings like the ones found in the Petite Palace in Paris. These flourishes provide a jumping-off point for the artist to reference Toronto’s built history. The paintings share a similar cinematic sensibility to the final public art installation. Located at street level, the artworks consist of three layers of hand-painted float glass lit from behind by LED panels. Their staggered repetitions of patterns reference the first “moving pictures”, and their luminous appearance is also a nod to filmic celluloid. The dynamism of this art glass comes from gestural flourishes that the artist frequently adds and deletes or wet glazes where she wipes away linear drawings to reveal layers behind. As with her other series, the public art project has provided new material for Harvey’s painting practice. Curves and forms that started as fragments of century-old motifs liquify into brilliant colour and light. The “Blueprint” series has an energy all its own. Each painting’s composition, maximized to the spatial boundaries of its framework, offers a powerful display of painterly expression and passion. The artist constructs the paintings very simply with single overlapping brushstrokes of different colours, piled on top of each other. In essence, her paintings are constructed of many layers of film, in this case, acrylic gel medium. Harvey’s method of working is to complete an underpainting of lines then apply eight to ten layers of gel medium, then paint another complex layer of coloured lines, followed by eight to ten more layers of gel, then another layer of colourful paint and so on until about there are about 24 layers. Harvey uses multiple layers of acrylic paint and gel interchangeably, building up depth on the painting surface to create a three-dimensional effect. She repaints luminous highlights, so they leap forward from the deep accretion of gel. Light bouncing off the overlapping transparent brushstrokes causes the paint underneath to shimmer and glow. Protruding from the picture plane, the built-up acrylic surfaces have a powerful, visceral presence that emphasizes the brilliant colours.

Painting:Acrylic on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:50 W x 40 H x 0.3 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.