Shelley Adler, Big Girl, 2009
Toronto artist Shelley Adler’s paintings are commanding in their painterly exuberance and stunning range of colour. For her second show at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, a large painting of a table setting anchors new paintings of the larger-than-life faces and figures that populate her work. Using fragments of contemporary life, Adler’s psychological portraits explore gender and identity which create a balance between interior and exterior worlds. Recent exhibitions include Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, where Sarah Milroy described Adler’s work in the Globe and Mail as a “beacon of intelligence and consumate skill.”
