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Robert Amos: Exhibition evokes a European ethos

On entering the exhibition of paintings by Diana Dean at the Martin Batchelor Gallery, one’s first impression is “oil paint.” In the gallery lined with canvases, the slight aroma of oil and solvents and varnish is evident.
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The Passage by Diana Dean, at the Martin Batchelor Gallery until June 22.

robertamos.jpgOn entering the exhibition of paintings by Diana Dean at the Martin Batchelor Gallery, one’s first impression is “oil paint.” In the gallery lined with canvases, the slight aroma of oil and solvents and varnish is evident. Dean’s paintings, coloured as richly as stained glass, are suffused with a sort of golden glow that brings to mind the museums of Europe.

Dean’s paintings are composed like the familiar Old Master pictures. Groups of figures are drawn specifically from the Classics (Artemesia and Actaeon, Psyche and Eros) or, by allusion, from the Bible — the Annunciation, the Deposition. But in fact they all represent part of her personal mythology. Set in the deep space of a mythic landscape based on the mountains and waterways near Dean’s Salt Spring Island home, the paintings tell us of The Journey, at sunset, moonrise or in the light of dawn.

Dean is 74 years of age. Born in Rhodesia, after her childhood and education in Britain, she came to Salt Spring Island in 1984. Traces of her mid-century British background are evident in the simplified trees and flowers she creates, reminiscent of the work of Stanley Spencer and Sybil Andrews. Like pre-Raphaelite painters of the Victorian era, she invokes a mythic past of Arthurian reveries, though without their painstaking accuracy of observation. Her painted vision has a robust, late-hippie flavour.

Dean has traced her inspiration to the quiet simplicity of Vermeer, yet the Romantic nature of her art is at odds with the cool formalism of that Dutch artist. The florid Italians of the late 15th century, such as Raphael, are a more likely model.

In the late 15th century, oil paint on canvas was developed to create more portable pictures, replacing frescos that had been painted directly on the wall. The oil in the paint results in a very long drying time, encouraging the smooth blending of colours and the tonal representation of volume. The varnished surface, usual with oil paintings, gives added depth of tone to the shadows. Oil, varnish, blending, volume, shadows — all these are basic to the work of Dean.

David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge makes it clear that about 1500, the science of optics and lenses changed the way painters worked. What had, up to that time, been a construct of memory and imagination was superseded by the rendering of the appearance of the surface of things.

No photo realist, Dean sticks to the old ways. Her stylized trees are invented in the studio. The characters she carefully paints are imaginary, based on her knowledge of anatomy and memory of things seen. Patiently, she models and moulds each figure as if she were sculpting it. It is no surprise that there are a number of small bronze figures sculpted by Dean in this show.

Though not a plein-air painter, she uses her garden and the Salt Spring territory as her setting. Fanciful natural forms are not rendered out-of-doors, but slowly generated over many hours in the studio. In a recent article in Aqua Magazine, Elizabeth Nolan wrote that Dean applies “as many as eight layers of paint, with more oil added to each layer for richly saturated pigments.” The artist often spends six hours a day in her studio, patiently going over every bit of the canvas.

Dean builds up her deep spaces in layers, often with a screen of trees in the foreground, beyond which receding planes lead us to the distant horizon. Sometimes, she paints interiors centring on a single figure. The Awakening shows a man sitting on a bed, with a carpet at his feet. The carpet has a “cross” motif, upon which a white flower is cast down. The crescent moon gleams outside the window, and a clock suggests that time is passing. Through a doorway in the background, a mystic figure beckons the awakening man toward her light.

One of the central images in the show is The Passage, in which the artist is represented, being paddled toward the sunset by a bearded boatman. She sits in the stern, with easel, canvas, paints and a bed roll. Dean’s vision of this moment is compelling, and it’s easy to overlook the fact that no one could successfully paddle a canoe from the bow, and that the paddler’s right hand is anatomically impossible. Close beside the boat, a large fish swims by, half out of the water.

Dean is a sort of legend on Salt Spring Island, and was recently elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. Her broader fame might come from her grand and dramatic canvas Clayoquot: Morning of the Demonstration, painted in 2010. This huge and highly finished scene is set in a forest valley in a predawn hour. A logged-over hillside is glimpsed through the gloom. In the middle distance, tree-huggers gather round a campfire, and their placards explain their presence. In the foreground, a tender scene unintentionally calls to mind the deposition of Christ in the tomb.

In fact, it is not Christ but a patient sit-in protester, being carried away by two uniformed police officers. The conjunction of a charged current event set in a romantic setting and echoing an ancient tale lends a fascinating poignancy to this topical painting.

But mostly, Dean develops a sweet romantic mystery, anachronistic and somehow apt for her Salt Spring Island home.

 

Diana Dean at Martin Batchelor Gallery, 712 Cormorant St., 250-385-7919, until June 22.