Dark Skies was a solo exhibition of work by Canadian artist Ian Sheldon.
"Dark Skies seeks to represent the sheer poetic beauty
and compositional skill that Sheldon brings to the genre
of landscape art", says director Claire McGovern.
Sheldon lives in Edmonton, Alberta and is profoundly influenced
by the prairie landscapes of the Western Canadian wilderness.
He excels in the depiction of tempestuous, dark and turbulent
skies with work that is derived from moments of real experience.
Sheldon classifies himself a "storm chaser".
Unlike the average enthusiast who pursues storms and tornados
from a journalistic or meteorological standpoint, his
goal is pure artistic inspiration. The artist tracks weather
patterns and storms on the online radar, driving out to
intercept them as they occur. The finished work illustrates
the sheer scale and often-violent power of a storm, notwithstanding
its dramatic impact on these huge tracts of prairie land.
Much inspiration is also found in Grasslands National
Park in southern Saskatchewan on the border with the United
States. The rare beauty and simplicity of these flat prairie
lines is manifest in Sheldon's art and brings an element
of minimal abstractness to the canvas. It is this very
depiction of limitless horizons and vast expanses of land
that evokes the true spirit of the Canadian and American
plains, conveying a sense of what early settlers in the
Americas must have felt and that moment of "true
freedom" unhampered by territorial boundaries.
The
paintings of Dark Skies offer a poetic unification of
heaven and earth - a moment of vital fusion between sky
and land when life itself is nurtured by the rains from
above. Sheldon holds degrees from Cambridge University
and the University of Alberta and is the recipient of
numerous awards and notable recognition within the art
world. He is also an accomplished writer and illustrator
and his artwork is represented in many public and private
collections. Sheldon was listed in the Canadian Who's
Who for 2005. Dark Skies at The Lola Gallery was his first exhibition in the United
States.
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