Hot off of the Lyghtesome press .... Very Limited copies of show booklet available at opening!
All are welcome so please don't miss it Tuesday April 3rd 4 - 6 p.m.

“DISENTANGLEMENT”

Drawings and Monoprints
ADAM MacDONALD
April 3 – 28, 2007
Lyghtesome Gallery, Antigonish, N.S.



Antigonish artist Adam MacDonald will be featured at Lyghtesome Gallery during the month of April in an exhibit of line drawings and monoprints entitled “Disentanglement”. The show runs from April 3-28, 2007 and will open with a public reception on Tuesday, April 3 at Lyghtesome from 4-6pm.

Adam MacDonald is no stranger to the area or to the arts community. Born in 1978 and raised in Pomquet, just outside of Antigonish, Adam MacDonald received an undergraduate degree from St. Francis Xavier University, majoring in Political Science with a minor in English. During that time he took a range of studio art courses, and received his first introduction to the art of printmaking, but had no real aspirations to become a professional artist. Moving to Ontario he began to study and work with Ryan Price at Catch 23 Studio Printshop in Guelph, Ontario, learning monoprint methods and developing a new, more engaged, aesthetic in his own expression. It was a year that became a turning point in his life, both personally and artistically. Eventually returning to the Maritimes, he entered the Bachelor of Education degree program at the University of New Brunswick, in Fredericton , and last fall came back to Antigonish to do a 14 week practicum at the Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional High School, and to use the printmaking facilities at the St.F.X. Art Department as an active member of the Society of Antigonish Printmakers (SOAP). It is during this time that the majority of the prints, as well as the drawings, in the show have been produced.

This first solo show at Lyghtesome Gallery represents an exciting new direction for this exceptional young artist. “Disentanglement” is about how we make sense of the complexities of life with its endless possibilities, how we sort and maneuver through the chaos of our physical, emotional and spiritual landscape to build our own narratives. Adam uses repetition and sequence, inherent qualities of printmaking, to explore this process, with the immediacy of realistic line drawing helping to provide lyrical but concrete ground along the way. The show is a collection of graphite drawings, etchings, drypoint with chine colle, graphite with chine colle, mezzotint, and monotypes that, as a whole, functions as a loose narrative piece, much like a visual fiction, with a protagonist, a cast of characters, various suggested plots or themes, and several settings, both urban and rural, all richly descriptive. One single print image provides a consistent substructure on which an evocative sequence of events or feelings or memories are played out in several subsequent prints, through added layers of chine colle or sometimes pencil, paint, ink or even colored pencil. Adam writes about his concept for the show:

“There are lines of separation all around us. Some create distinct yet interacting spaces, like the form of a branch or the angle of a house. They can also create narrow intervals amid everyday decisions and experiences; moments between the possibilities of choice or the predicted effects of time. Whether metaphoric or literal, the ensuing dichotomies both limit and guide our understanding of reality, and create visual and mental references for insight into what remains mysterious in life. The line drawings are therefore a process of making sense of this chaos or uncertainty, adding structure and order to randomness.”

“The initial landscapes are executed onsite in drypoint and create the scaffold or setting for the piece. Each time the plate is printed, in the ink is manipulated differently within these created limitations; adding characters, scenarios, and fears that ultimately change the meaning and eventual perception of the image; pushing it beyond the limitations of time and place. Sometimes I print them differently each time in an attempt to explore the image for ideas. After I’ve explored and exhausted the possibilities of the engraving, or the other way around, the series is finished and the story has been told. The success of each narrative therefore depends on my drawing, memory, and imagination – and at the same time, is an exploration into the extent to which our perceptions are dictated by internal and external change.”

“Disentanglement” will act as a springboard for a series of shows Adam MacDonald has ahead of him that will build on this narrative concept. The Argyle Gallery in Halifax, with whom he has been showing for the last two years, has scheduled a solo show of his work in November of next year. Then in December he has been asked back for a second show at the Ingrid Mueller Art and Concepts Gallery in Fredericton, following on a successful exhibit of his monotypes through the gallery’s Emerging Artist Series in September of 2006. Having made a serious commitment to his art, and already well initiated into the complexities and technical challenges of the printmaking medium, Adam MacDonald hopes eventually to purchase his own press and continue pushing into new territory.

“Disentanglement” will be followed in May by the Annual Invitational “Flowers to Fruit” Show, the Twentieth Anniversary for this group floral show that features artists and artisans from across the Province.