ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present "Half-Light Over the Baltic Sea,” the premiere solo exhibition by gallery artist Daniel Hutchinson. The exhibition will be on display in the West Gallery from February 23rd to March 24th, 2012. An opening reception will be held on Thursday February 23rd from 6:00-9:00pm. Half-light alludes to the time of day when the sun is just below the horizon, flooding the atmosphere and landscape with its last light. This is a time of dramatic transformation where the colour temperature of the world’s forms continuously alters with the shifting light. Daniel Hutchinson’s first solo exhibition in Toronto comprises recent paintings made in the wake of a prolific three-month residency on the island of Gotland, Sweden. “I predict 2012 will offer the visual-arts enthusiast experiences counter to the furies raging in the outside world – not pure escapism, but a different kind of questioning of norms and reality, one more considered, long viewed and far more attractive,” writes the Globe and Mail’s R. M. Vaughan, touting Hutchinson’s upcoming exhibition of dramatic paintings as “a kind of oxymoronical serene spectacle”. Hutchinson’s inaugural hometown solo exhibition will present seascape paintings unified by their shared response to the half-light. Unlike static representations of seascapes, these recent paintings venture to mimic the action and movement of the sea in ribbon-like brushstrokes of fluid paint. These brushstrokes map gestures that caress the picture surface while depicting depth, illusion and an optical morphology of water, light and paint. The highly reflective surfaces of these paintings promise a dynamic viewing experience, aiming to inspire wonder – like gazing over the sea at half-light. Rendered with a variety of grey and black hues on panel, Hutchinson’s near monochrome oil paintings largely avoid the conventional modeling of light and dark values in paint. Instead, the image emerges where actual light is caught in the grooves and reflected from the ridges of every meticulous brushstroke. The viewer’s movement enables light to shift across the surface, simultaneously revealing and concealing parts of the subject. These pictures are constantly on the verge of abstraction and disintegration, as the movement of light over the surface plunges areas into deep and endless blackness while bringing other areas into brilliant and reflected light. Daniel Hutchinson is a visual artist based in Toronto. He received his BFA (2004) from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver, and his MFA (2008) from NSCAD University in Halifax. He has exhibited his paintings across Canada, in the U.S.A., Australia and Sweden. In 2009 he received Honourable Mention for the Halifax Mayor’s Award for Contemporary Visual Art and was a semi-finalist for the 11th and 13th RBC Canadian Painting Competitions. In 2012, Hutchinson’s work will be included in a nationwide survey of contemporary Canadian painting organized by L'Université du Québec à Montréal at L’Arsenal Contemporain, Montréal titled Le goût de la peinture. For more information, please visit www.dbhutchinson.com.