Angell Gallery is pleased to present Daniel Hutchinson's Tin Vision. The exhibition runs from Friday, Feb. 2 to Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018 with an opening reception on Feb. 2 at 7:00 p.m.
Dramatic light and rich colour palettes are two traits associated with Baroque paintings of the 17th Century. Painters such as Vermeer and Caravaggio are heralded for the sensitive brushwork, and masterly renderings of light in their paintings.
Close looking is also rewarded in Daniel Hutchinson’s current paintings. For the past few years, he has been employing frottage and grattage techniques to embed into his canvases forms and textures that reference his immediate surroundings. “I have been working in a century-old mercantile building in downtown Hamilton that still displays evidence of its former occupants,” he explains. “The neighbourhood around my studio was historically a textile and garment district, but there is now an influx of creative entrepreneurs establishing new businesses and making speculative investments in property, which is raising concerns about gentrification.”
By using found objects, like leaves from tropical plants sourced from the city’s botanical gardens, to textiles, drapery cord and dress-makers’ patterns (a nod to the area’s former businesses), Hutchinson’s rich paintings combine elements of documentary and site-responsive conceptualism. They also recall the colourfield and gestural abstraction of European and American modernist painters, while the ghostly imprints read like the after-image impressed on the retina after a flash photograph.
“My paintings are often referred to as ‘abstract’,” Hutchinson says. “But, they do embody my conscientious perception of the real world.”
- Bill Clarke
Daniel Hutchinson studied painting at Emily Carr and NSCAD University. His has mounted solo shows at YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto) and Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery (Halifax), and was featured in the national survey The Painting Project at L’Université du Québec à Montréal, and More Than Two (Let It Make Itself) at The Power Plant (Toronto). Accolades include the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, the Brucebo Foundation Residency (Sweden) and project grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
