Opening Reception: Thursday, June 27, 6 – 8 PM
Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition with Greg Hardy. The exhibition opens on June 27 and will be on view through July 27 with a reception for the artist on Thursday, June 27 from 6– 8 PM. This will be Hardy’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.
For the last six years, landscape painter Greg Hardy has divided his time between Saskatoon and Lac La Ronge in Northern Saskatchewan. During the roughly four-hour drive between locations, the topography changes from vast prairieland to glistening lakes populated with islands and pine trees. This exhibition features paintings of both places, concentrating on the vistas that Hardy travels to most often for inspiration. His frequent renderings of these locations recalls Paul Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire, a subject Cezanne painted many times but never in exactly the same way. For Hardy, the changing quality of light and dramatic weather in the Prairies, makes even the most familiar spot seem new. In each painting, he conveys a distinct mood and character with his animated brushwork and playful use of colour.
Hardy’s process begins with small sketches made onsite but it is the larger drawings and paintings developed back at his studio that display his innate connection with the land and communicate its power to his audience. Hardy’s latest works are marked by more gestural and simplified compositions, where a poetic balance exists between land and sky. In many of these paintings, brooding clouds dominate the canvas while a shallow line of paint with loosely sketched trees gives perspective and scale to what would otherwise be an abstract painting. Hardy has an affinity for nature but he has always been less concerned about rendering the landscape in realistic detail; he strives to develop relationships between colour and form, regardless of whether this form is a rock, tree or cloud.
Greg Hardy has exhibited in museums across Canada for over 20 years including recent solo shows at the Moosejaw Museum & Art Gallery and the Kenderdine Art Gallery in Saskatchewan. His work is held in many prominent corporate and museum collections.
