Pictures fading from our memory,
how fast they disappear,
only leaving a semblance of their likeness,
a silhouette,
or vignette of a moment
we are fated to forget.
Picture finding a discarded piece of paper on the street. Inside the folded page is a handwritten poem. Its conclusion has been torn off. The text is abstracted, partially illegible due to the smudged blue ink.
In Colin Canary’s work lyrical circuits of translucent paint leak, pool over, dissect, and submerge, archival and photographic images. Apparently suspended in fleeting tranquility, the cinematic imagery begins to disintegrate and spoil, as overexposed and distorted captures of limbs, organs, faces, and flowers float, preserved but also veiled in an undertow of plastic and painterly prose. Canary’s paintings are a glimpse into the flora and fauna of dreams, the erosion of memory, the familiar in what is unfamiliar, things that have slipped away: landscapes we see only in our minds.
Colin Canary (b. Halifax, NS) completed his undergraduate degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University, where he was awarded the Lillian Vineberg Graduate Award in Painting and Drawing, and was twice recipient of the Tom Hopkins Memorial Graduate Award. Recent exhibitions include Silver Linings at the Concordia MFA Gallery (QC), Ignition 19 at Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (QC), Reverb at Art Mûr (QC), and Fractured Utopia at Karsh Masson (ON). Canary lives and works in Montréal.
