Friday, July 08, 2011

Diane Woodward: Fancy Art

FANCY ART
ART FANCY
ART Rental and Sales, The Ottawa Art Gallery
2 Daly Avenue (Arts Court)
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-5pm, Sunday 12-4

Anyone paying attention to Madoc, Ontario artist Diane Woodward's work has noticed, over the past decade and a half, a series of small shifts, accumulating their way into a larger, longer arc of development, some of which has been quite astounding. For years, the Ottawa artist was producing expressive animal paintings, calling herself a “maximalist,” with detailed foregrounds and backgrounds. Since then, Woodward has expanded to painting Hindu gods with minimal foregrounds and backgrounds, woodworks, decorative frames, wooden sculpture with painted bottecaps [see my note on a show in 2008 she had at the Mud Oven of such], furniture and now, the most lovely and evocative stained glass I've seen, essentially a lyric expression of glass that looks nearly liquid.

She continues to work her animal motif, but mixed with various other elements, adding constantly to the flow of some thirty years of painting in and around Ottawa.

No comments: