For her first Canmore show, Calgary artist Amy Dryer takes the sky and trees and transposes each, trading them one for the other.
Dryer uses the idea of transposing or rearranging elements, specifically the sky and branches, as a base for her latest body of work Transposition: A Collection of Notes, on display at Elevation Gallery on Canmore’s Main Street until Nov. 20.
“With Transposition in particular I’m interested in the exchange and rearranging of elements in particular so it’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the branches begin,” she said.
Dryer works with oil paints, which fits well with her gestural and instinctive approach, as she’s able to move the paint around on her canvas creating textures and thick brush strokes.
She also does much of her work outside on large canvasses that often require two people to carry and maneuver into place, instead of working from small sketches that she later takes into the studio.
“There’s an exchange between my time and experience and the work itself,” Dryer said about working outside on large canvases. “It’s good to have a personal connection with everything I paint.”
That personal connection is also built through photographs and extensive journaling, both of which serve to inform her work, enriching her experience. In turn, likening her paintings to a piece of music, her process creates a richer experience for the people who see her work.
“In that way it’s similar to listening to a song. There’s a beginning and an end. People go in and look at a painting and bring something into it from their own life and then they walk away from it,” she said.
“There’s always been a connection in my work with music. My paintings have a rhythm and constraints and structure that music would have, but that also have freedom and unpredictability, the same way as music has too. I feel the way a painting unfolds is quite familiar to music.”
The landscape is also a limitless resource, Dryer said. And for her current body of work, time spent on Gabriola Island provided the direct inspiration.
“I really like lines and I love to draw. I draw with paints and I love the mark making of the branches. I paint the sky so it embraces or envelopes the trees. It’s like it’s sculpted by the sky.”
Along with drawing inspiration from the landscape and music, Dryer is heavily influenced by her artistic community and her education, which has taken her from Calgary to Scotland, New Brunswick, where she has studied art, art history and English and finally back to Calgary, where she focuses on figurative work, both the natural and urban landscape.
