Tim desClouds + Pat Durr
Tim desClouds – Artist Statement
In this most recent body of works I have pared down my working process to a celebration of the tradition of drawing and painting leaving behind the many sculptural embellishments included in earlier works. The content of the works flow forward from my previous 2022 exhibition, “Somewhere Between Mother Goose and Foucault”, and 2024 exhibition “Heavy Rhymes, Lightly Tossed”
I have worked new iconography into my pieces. By referencing my love for philosophy and the many quirky nursery rhymes I have read to my daughter and more recently my grandsons, I have found a whimsical middle ground for my works. Ironically many of the concepts within these stories parallel and overlap each other. As a lifelong student of media, culture, and philosophy, playing with these narratives has allowed me to inject newfound interest and excitement into the art process and final products.
These works are materializations of my everyday life— thoughts, feelings, actions, and interactions—and they help to weave a landscape of our shared existence. I imagine each work as a physical space where the viewer may stop in, think, discuss, and depart freely. The viewer is given the opportunity to invest interest and imagination, and to make what had once appeared incomprehensible, comprehensible and personally meaningful.
About the Artist
Tim desClouds is an Ottawa-based artist, born in Montreal and raised in Ottawa. He has been an educator, and arts advocate for well over 40 years. He has served on both the Ottawa Art Gallery and Gallery Saw Board of Directors. Tim retired from a 30 year teaching career at Canterbury High School Regional Programme for the Arts within the district of the Ottawa – Carleton Board of Education. He has created numerous public art works throughout Ontario and Quebec, and his work has been acquired for numerous corporate, private and government collections throughout North America.
Pat Durr – Artist Statement
It has been my good fortune to be an active practicing artist for over 45 years. During that time I have tried to positively contribute to the world I live and work in by giving workshops and lectures in Ottawa and across the country.
My current artworks are concerned with the worlds which surround me, both the natural and the urban – industrial. These landscapes have consistently been a reference source for my art. To this end, I have accumulated cast-off objects from my surroundings – the artistic, natural, and industrial waste which I then reference in my artworks to probe the relationship between our actions and the natural world.
My artworks allude to often problematic and unfortunate negative interfaces with our environment. Yet, also central to my art is a celebration of the complexity of life, as well as an exploration of this interplay between life and its complexities. Most of my recently created pieces reflect my response to the pandemic and to my positive hopes for the future. While the imagery is primarily abstract, it is often infused with hints of recognizable objects and can echo images found in my earlier prints and paintings.
I feel that the cyclic aspects of growth, extinction and renewal are symbolic of my own often chaotic experience of existence.
About the Artist
Durr has been an active practicioner of art for over 45 years. During those years, she has tried to positively contribute to the world she lives and works in by giving workshops and lectures across the country, and by working with national organizations and advising the federal government on issues that directly affect Canadian visual artists.
Durr’s solo exhibitions of paintings, drawings and prints have been shown in public and private galleries and artist-run centers across Canada and the United States. Her artworks are in public, private and corporate collections in Canada, United States, Australia, England, Cuba and Israel. She has received numerous awards and grants through-out her long career.