September 10 – October 3, 2009
Artist Reception: September 10, 6 – 8 pm
Vancouver artist Shannon Belkin has earned international notice and praise for her exquisite portraits of horses. When Horses were Gods, her 2004 exhibit, featured a magnificent series of large-scale horse portraits, inspired by global equine mythology – from Arabia, Etruscan, Babylonia, to Finland and China. The series gave rise to an invitation by Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, for Belkin to visit Ireland as his guest in the Fall of 2008, to observe and paint his famed Thoroughbreds. Her experience, over several days at Ballysheehan Stud Farm in Tipperary County, inspired Shannon to create another body of work portraying these glorious animals.
As an equestrian herself, Belkin is intimately acquainted with her subject matter. Long before the invention of writing and the wheel, and arguably painting, horses began to shape the manner in which humans lived, prospered and interacted. In this new series, Shannon Belkin continues to explore the concept of companion species, the manner in which humans’ and horses’ fates are intertwined in ways that the classic distinction between domesticator and domesticated cannot adequately address. For Belkin, the notion that human beings end at the skin and that animals exist as tools to be lorded over and utilized, is subjective and fictitious. Maintaining that the historical relationship of humans and horses involves significantly more than exploitation, and embracing the concept of mutual necessity, as evidenced throughout modern world history, Belkin adheres to the ‘companion species’ ethos, bonded in “significant otherness”, as described by Donna Haraway.
The intimate, evocative and often provocative equine-sense achieved by Belkin portraits force us to acknowledge the deep emotional connection we experience through face to face inter-species friendship, esteem and love. Shannon Belkin graduated from the Emily Carr University (formerly College) of Art and Design in 1992. This is her third series on horses and her fifth solo exhibition with Diane Farris Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Lynn Ruscheinsky and is accompanied by an essay.
|
|
