Mark Dicey laughs when asked about a particularly gorgeous photo displayed as part of Double Insight, a series of online studio visits created by Calgary’s Jarvis Hall Gallery.
The idea for the program, which launched a few weeks back, is to visit an artist represented by the gallery at his or her studio through still photographs and explore “the sacred place where creative life and creative process coexist.” As with many galleries in the city, it has become a way for Jarvis, which specializes in contemporary Canadian art, to stay connected with its roster of artists and the art community.
The photograph in question has Dicey’s colourful sketchbook lying on a rocky shore, with what looks like a rustic small house on the water’s edge amid a foggy background. There is a very good reason it doesn’t look much like northeast Calgary, which is where the veteran abstract painter’s home studio is actually located. The photograph was taken in Nova Scotia, where Dicey’s son lives with his family.
“I thought it might throw off a few people, throw a little curveball,” he says. “I thought maybe people would think it’s outside my studio door or something.”
Still, while the photo may veer slightly from the studio settings that most of the Double Insight series stick with, it does offer a peek into Dicey’s creative process. Sketchbooks are constant companions no matter where he is, with the colourful “sketches” used to inform the larger abstract canvasses he specializes in. On Thursday, the Jarvis Hall Gallery will open Rhythm Section, an online-only solo exhibition by Dicey made up of work he has been creating for the past six months. So Double Insight offers a timely glimpse into the artist’s modus operandi.
“Sometimes it’s nice for people to get a little bit of insight into the working process,” he says. “I work all the time, whether I’m in the studio or out of the studio because I work with sketchbooks. Whether I’m travelling or in the house or in the studio or in a bar or in a restaurant, it’s something I’ve been doing for nearly 30 years. I don’t do representational drawing in the sketchbook, it’s the same as what I do with my studio work. It’s abstraction. It’s pursuing colour, shape, line, texture.”
After graduating from Alberta College of Art in the early 1980s, Dicey has developed his own language in abstraction over the years, but it has been grounded in “100-plus years of exploration, internationally” of art history. As the title of the exhibit suggests, rhythm has always been key to the painter’s aesthetic.
“The rhythm of making a composition and abstraction, the flow and rhythm of just basic living and structures,” he says. “With my past as a runner, a drummer — music has been a big part of my life as well — rhythm has always been critical.”
Rhythm Section will be the gallery’s first experiment with a fully online exhibition. It was set to open in a traditional manner in mid-April before the COVID-19 pandemic derailed plans. The gallery has worked with a web developer to retool its site so it can present the exhibition online. It opens Thursday and runs until June 27.
Meanwhile, the gallery will continue profiling its artists and how they work with Double Insight, which can be found on its Facebook page. The series offers not only general insight into an artist’s creative process but also stories about their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“One of the reasons we did it was to tell the story of how some artists are unable to get to their studio,” says gallery director Shannon Norberg.
In Montreal, for instance, painter Corri-Lynn Tetz was suddenly prevented from going to her studio when the city shut down due to the pandemic.
Artist Rachel MacFarlane has opted to live in the same Brooklyn building where her studio is located so she can continue to work while avoiding travel in the COVID-ravaged city.
“If you have to take the subway, if you have to go out, how many people and how many doors do you have to open to get to the place that is technically supposed to be your sanctuary?” Norberg says. “You have to go through so many obstacles. So it made the most sense to move into the same building where the studio is.”
Norberg says she hopes Double Insight’s look inside an artist’s studio will also give art lovers an inside look at the creative process.
“We find it fascinating to see how somebody works, what they surround themselves with, to see how they work, to see how their brain works,” she says. “Is it clean? Is it messy? Once you get to see that, sometimes the work that comes out the other side makes more sense.”
Mark Dicey’s Rhythm Section opens May 7 as part of the Jarvis Hall Gallery online viewing room. Visit jarvishallgallery.com. Visit www.facebook.com/JarvisHallGallery/ for Double Insight.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
