Bobbie Burgers: Lightning Running Through

Nicholas Metivier Gallery is thrilled to present Lightning Running Through, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Bobbie Burgers. 

 

During the creation of this body of work, Burgers, an avid gardener, began to think about her own work as a site of propagation, the process of creating new plants from existing ones. Burgers’ practice is one of continuous self-reference; she photographs her paintings and then makes prints of enlarged sections of them, using these as a jumping off point for her works on paper. Each print becomes the base of a new composition created with collaged elements, a direct dialogue between the original painting and the work on paper. Deepening this relationship between painted elements and paper, Bobbie often uses brushstrokes on canvas as collage pieces, or even paints directly onto the paper work. The exhibition title, Lightning Running Through, is a reference to these literal and metaphorical notions of connection throughout her practice. 

Notable in this exhibition is Burgers’ return to a more figurative interpretation of florals. While she does not paint from life, she has been spending more time in her own Vancouver garden and finding inspiration while observing movement and transformation as the seasons change. In her most recent paintings, she seeks to evoke flowers at their peak moment of expression, which Bobbie believes is right as they begin to decay, or even past this point. She sees this as a parallel for our own lives and personalities, which evolve and become more defined, unique, and entrenched as we age. There is a sensation of abundance as Burgers pushes brushstrokes to the very edges of the canvas, as though the blooms are growing beyond the canvas. The textures and colours oscillate between protruding and receding, reflecting the cyclical themes that have always been central to her work.