WAYNE BOUCHER: A Gathering of Angels
This exhibition that takes place at all PAVIA locations at the same time and opens on Thursday, February 8th, 2018.
About the Artist
Wayne was the recipient of the 2006 Nova Scotia Portia White Award for excellence, innovation, and expression in the arts.
Wayne Boucher studied at the Banff Centre, Alberta, and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1975. The following year he moved to Graywood, Annapolis County, Nova Scotia where he continues his painting practice at his studio in Parker’s Cove.
Boucher’s solo professional exhibition record spans the past three decades.
The recipient of numerous grants from provincial and federal agencies including a Canada Council Established Artist Grant in 2001, other key professional successes include winning the 2004 juried competition to execute the mural entitled Réveil for the new Interpretation Centre at Grand-Pré National Historic Site that marks the 18th Century Acadian Deportation.
Boucher became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 2002. Other active memberships include the Canadian Artists Representation, and Visual Arts Nova Scotia. Boucher is a founding member and A past chair of the Annapolis Region Community Arts Council.
Artist Statement
“A Gathering of Angels” speaks to the abstracted essence of a spiritual being in transformational and transitory encounters.
The six paintings that form “The Gathering of Angels” series were all completed in 2017. They are the quickest of paintings in their execution and resolution, and I feel the most successful in fulfilling the intent of my paintings. The objective being that the tool of paint application along with the manner and process of paint application informs the content of the paintings. The two square painting are from 2016 and are part of the “Holding” series. For example, the title “Orange Holding Blue” informs what the painting is about that the supporting orange bars are in a dynamic tension of holding and pushing/pulling at the central blue abstracted shape.
The “Gathering of Angels”, I think developed from age and the inevitability of life, never having seen an angel except for depictions, and always imaging that they really did have wings. So that along with letting the manner and process of painting inform the content evolving into the wispy winged spiritual beings in some kind of transformation context. Also, for the last five years I have been a member of the “Company of Angels” based in Annapolis Royal, as part of the oldest (age-wise) dance company in Canada. The Company of Angels under the direction of Choreographer Randy Glynn performed “Dancing In The Third Act” at the Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal (FODAR), Montreal, Moncton, and Halifax (2013-15). For the last two years, we have performed a “Lighted Rooms” (2016 -17).
My work deals with the luminosity of light and the radiance of colour in counterpoint with elemental schemata that transcends surface and meaning. The goal of my work has been for the viewer to “fall in and drown in the work” and see things beyond the surface of the paintings.
My painting process uses the layering of see-through images and imaginings of x-ray vision similar to the drawn schemata of Canada’s aboriginal artists. To see beyond the surface, whether it be the early ambiguous schematics of something/someplace, or the current painting process whereby the dance of paint application, movement, direction, tools and their manner of use inform its’ significance, either as an object/painting unto itself or having further consequential narratives and visual theatrics beyond the surface. The paintings have the appearance of being lit from within, and use edge bars, and other geometric counterpoints to create the dynamics of push and pull oppositions of colour, structures, and gestural mark making. “Tripping The Light” simplifies notions, and sensibilities of mark making into a cohesiveness of intent, paint application and implied meaning or interpretation.