Posts Tagged ‘painting’

Via the STUNNING art site Svärta, we discovered the work of close-to-home Toronto artist Carly Waito. I love her interest in the natural world and in the minute detail of the objects in it, and I love Waito’s commitment, demonstrated in the painstaking and faithful rendering of such detail on canvas. When I see this in a painting, I like to picture the artist hunched over her work and imagine the physicality of her commitment: the sore bum, the cramped back, the pinched fingers around a brush. So much of oneself goes into the work, it’s such a gift. But that’s just me.

Waito had a show at the excellent Narwhal Art Projects last year and they had this to say about her work:

Her meticulously detailed renderings of mineral specimens draw the viewer in, encouraging close inspection of the material qualities of the subjects. They raise thoughts about the common impulse to possess pieces of the natural world which we find beautiful or curious and to assign complex layers of value to these objects based on a range of factors, such as rarity, historical context, scientific significance, and subjective notions of beauty. They are an extension of her interest in natural history, collecting, curiosity, wonder, and the appeal of small things.