FIONA ACKERMAN
These paintings combine portraits inspired by old photographs of strangers, pure shape and colour. Many were made while Fiona was pregnant, so it’s not surprising characters are lost in thought or asleep, gazing at the future, falling backwards into private matters. Waiting is a common theme.
Looking at Waiting it Out, I imagine a miniature king ready to impose a new order. The splay of spills and amniotic clouds adds drama, heightens anticipation. (Fiona says she was thinking of how the adult is already present in the child.) The Swoon suggests a girl’s burgeoning sensuality, her beauty balanced by modesty. A sleeping figure slumps in The Nightwatchman, as though a bed is forbidden, one hand holding up the head, the other languid, long fingers defined as precisely as a charcoal drawing. The essence of sleep is captured: a time when the duties of wakefulness, even comfort, give way to dreams.
So often these images well up with a story dying to be told. What is it Patience holds in her hands? A bouquet, a balloon? Her sultry eyes, a mouth ready with words, a weeping dress. Her head and shoulders dominate the portrait, a figure of majesty and dignity.
Spectators, crowned winners, torch bearers populate Spectacular Failure, No Ordinary Success. You can hear the roar of the crowd. Yet typically, some element – colour, content or title – inevitably undercuts the possibility of one dominant mood. In this case, it’s the title. There are no silver or bronze medals in this world, no top of the losers – only gold and going down in flames. Rooftop Eden is from the new world born with Oskar Isadore.
Fiona (my daughter) grew up in Montreal and graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2003). She also took several workshops with her father and mentor, artist Gregor Hiltner (below). She is represented by the Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver, where she lives, and the Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary. Hopefully a Montreal gallery will sign her up soon, so we can see more pictures, more Oskar.
- Marianne Ackerman
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| After the Visit | Waiting it Out | Nightwatchman |
