All photos by Vera Grbic
You’d thought about it, knew it was bound to happen, and resolved yourself to its eventuality. You understood that somebody, one fateful day, would ask you what you want to be when you grow up. The perpetual scholarly patterns of adolescence couldn’t help but change, as life finally crept into your subconscious and you began to realize that career decisions would have to be made. Back then, those trusty authority figures in your life might not tell you that there are broad variations in career choices. In fact, they might not be well equipped to tell you what lay beyond the 9-to-5 career that they’ve likely lead.
So how does the career theme relate to the latest exhibition at Patrick John Mills Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, which provocatively asks you to “Quit Your Job”? For Patrick John Mills, the gallery’s owner, “To be a professional artist is something that’s similar to being a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber.”
“Tell your Boss to Kiss your ASS. You want to be an Artist. You want to live your life, be free, listen to your inner self, and follow your dreams. Now ask yourself if you have the strength, courage, determination to believe in yourself. After all … who needs money for food, housing, pension … Next time you see an Artist … give them a HUG.” –Patrick John Mills
So what about the content of the exhibition itself? Full of never-before-exhibited pieces, the artists whose works line the walls truly exemplify the series’ title”.
Essentially, Mills wants to get people to understand what it means to be a real artist through this exhibit. He finds “that the word ‘artist’ has really taken a beating,” noting that “if someone goes around and puts bread in a toaster and makes some toast, then they’re not a chef.” Along the same lines, Mills notes how buying an expensive camera and taking pretty photos does not make one a professional photographer.
He wants to draw the line. “When you look at an artist, a professional artist, it’s someone who’s really dedicated, you know, years and years of their life to it,” argues Mills. “And they have a certain kind of focus that adds respect to their work.”
According to Mills, the exhibition title is deliberately provocative. Instead of asking every single person who comes through the gallery to quit their jobs, this exhibition examines what a dedicated artist actually does and the bravery with which an artist is imbued.
Mathieu Laca’s works are one of the main draws. A mainstay at Mills’ gallery, Laca is a full-time, Montreal-based painter who has sold consistently all over Europe.
“I am the living proof that you should quit your job, I guess,” says Laca, who in fact has never held a job other than visual artist. Based on one of his latest success stories – he sold multiple works to a woman in Norway for upwards of $7,000 – he exemplifies the revenue-attaining, continuously-working artist.
Among a wall devoted to Laca’s work, one grouping of his paintings comes from an original series of 13, four of which are displayed for “Quit Your Job”. These pieces can be viewed as retrospective discussions, as Laca describes them as a “dialog with painters I admire and that lived a long time ago.” He was able to accomplish this dialog by using the traditional pigments the masters of the day were using. Every single colour particle in each of the paintings is the exact colour that was available to the painters in their own time. One of the brightest blues used in the Renaissance came all the way Afghanistan. These days, the internet solves age-old procurement problems, as Laca was able to get almost all the required pigments from a California company that specializes in restored paintings.
Adam F. Davidson, an Ottawa-based artist, quit his string of jobs – which include restaurant kitchen aid and house painter – to paint full-time and teach visual arts on the side. While many of his earlier pieces are colour-drenched abstracts, he has turned to a more figurative style recently. Prominently featured in the first room of the exhibition, The Pointer is a particularly good example of his new technique.
“He’s really pushing things,” says Mills of Davidson’s work. “He’s kind of navigating in a similar kind of fashion as [painter Jackson] Pollock.” Mills is perhaps alluding to the layering technique that Davidson uses on some of his figurative pieces.
Another featured artist is relative newcomer Shannon Lee Mannion. Mannion switched from the profession of reporter to that of visual artist. This may explain why her muse is the computer keyboard. After switching careers about three years ago, she muses that “been defaming keyboards ever since.” Make sure to check out the piece that incorporates a keyboard and toy cars, cleverly named The Information Highway Crashes and Burns.
Finally, Patrick John Mills is living the artist’s dream: owning the gallery, putting on the exhibition, and exhibiting his own work. The thick, three dimensional, parallel and perpendicular lines found in his oil paintings of Ottawa’s city streets evoke a present-ness of feeling. The reason you may feel like you are part of the scene is due to the fact that he painted these city intersections – such as Bank and Laurier – outside, in real-time, on a winter pavement.
One notable thread that runs through the entire exhibit is the theme of death and rebirth, or perhaps, less finitely, the theme of taking something apart and building it up once again. Whether it’s due to Mannion’s appropriation of the keyboard, Laca’s subject of dead artist as inspiration for new art, Davidson’s transition from abstract work to figurative pieces, or the obvious title, the feeling of a newness that has found its path from the old is a definite aspect of “Quit Your Job”.
The conclusion: don’t quit your job, but go see why these artists did.
Quit your job is running at the Patrick John Mills Contemporary Fine Art Gallery (286 Hinchey Ave) until April 28. An artists talk with Shannon Lee Mannion and Adam F. Davidson will take place on April 12 from 7 to 8pm, and a happy hour will happen on the 14 from 7pm to 1am (tickets are $20).
