Bobbie Burgers: Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

March 5 - 28, 2020

Please contact us at (416) 205-9000 or by email, [email protected] if you would like to get in touch about this exhibition. For a more extensive online view, click here.

 

Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Bobbie Burgers. The exhibition will open on March 5th and run until March 28th with an opening reception on Thursday, March 5th from 6 to 8 pm. This is Burgers’ inaugural exhibition at the gallery.

 

I am enamored by accidental occurrences. The way pigments, each having their own plot to play out, battle for dominance on the canvas while being shaped by mishaps and accidents. For many years I have attempted to transcribe the beauty and simplicity of what we witness everyday – birth, death, decay and renewal. 

- Bobbie Burgers

 

Based in Vancouver and of Dutch descent, Bobbie Burgers’ primary source of inspiration throughout her career has been florals. Whether they are in a vase on her counter or blooming in her garden, flowers are a constant presence in her life. As a painter, she has developed a unique ability to convey universal meaning and emotion through her expressive brushwork that loosely describes petals, stems and natural life cycles. More recently, her paintings have shifted towards pure abstraction, the floral elements barely recognizable.

 

In Float Like A Butterfly – Sting Like a Bee, Burgers examines a specific parallel between humans and nature - their ability to be both delicate and beautiful, powerful and fierce. Using a wide range of mark-making including staining and spraying the canvas, she builds compositions that satisfy the traditional notion of femininity that one would expect from a floral while inserting an underlying, sometimes unsettling, hint of darkness that is often alluded to in her titles.  

 

In addition to Burgers’ impressive large-scale canvases - the centerpiece of the show is a diptych spanning 16 feet - are several works on paper that highlight Burgers’ experimental and sculpture technique. Combining pastel, oil, acrylic and spray paint, the weight of the materials unapologetically stains, sculpts and transforms the paper beneath, defying its intended capabilities.

 

Bobbie Burgers has exhibited her work internationally including in Sweden and China. Burgers is represented in Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco.

 

To read Bobbie Burgers' artist statement, click here.