{"id":28542,"date":"2018-04-27T03:53:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28542"},"modified":"2018-04-25T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T21:05:08","slug":"intimate-portraits-at-the-zack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/27\/intimate-portraits-at-the-zack\/","title":{"rendered":"Intimate portraits at the Zack"},"content":{"rendered":"

The exhibit Painting Intimate, showcasing the work of penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff, is at the Zack Gallery until May 11. (photo by Olga Livshin)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The exhibit Painting Intimate introduces Vancouver art lovers to two very different local artists: penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff. Different in their approaches, their styles and their creative philosophies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always liked painting,\u201d eisenberg told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cI painted as a teenager, then stopped for a few years. I resumed painting in my 20s, but I was a closet painter then. I had several jobs in those years, worked as a cook and in retail. I kept on painting as a hobby, but, when I was 30, I took a class at Emily Carr. The instructor liked my works and suggested I apply for a full-time program.\u201d She did.<\/p>\n

Graduating from Emily Carr in 1995, she has been a full-time artist ever since, working in various themes and in a range of sizes as she tried to find her niche. For her, there is a huge gap between the words \u201cpicture\u201d and \u201cpainting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople buy pictures and hang them on their walls,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m interested in paintings, not pictures. I\u2019m trying to learn what is painting in the 21st century, when there are so many pictures around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lately, as this exhibition demonstrates, all her paintings have been small. \u201cI like working on small canvases,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to figure out what I want, and the small size allows me to create more paintings, to experiment with different series and subjects. Sometimes, I even work on a few different series simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current show displays several of her series. There are hazy cityscapes, pulsing with light. There are brightly textured flower bouquets. A number of the paintings are from her latest series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this series, I\u2019ve been exploring the history of women in the arts, how other artists painted their female models,\u201d she said. From 18th-century artist Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin to fashion photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries, eisenberg has transformed other artists\u2019 women through the prism of her own artistic vision. In her abstracted compositions, which follow the others\u2019 outlines but express her own esthetic, eisenberg had made all the portraits small and intimate \u2013 and faceless.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two reasons for all my figures being faceless,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen we identify emotions, faces are what we look at. I wanted to show emotions without the faces, through paints, colours and shapes. In this series, I also examined who influenced whom in the art history, and how it reflected in their female model paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The internet age is another reason for this approach. \u201cI view the reality of contemporary culture as a series of faceless interactions through social media,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I wanted to express. Hence, the hashtag in the title of the series, #otherartistswomen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Ray Ophoff has 15 paintings in this show, most of them flowers and landscapes in exuberant, uplifting colours. (photo by Olga Livshin)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Zack Gallery director Linda Lando suggested eisenberg apply for a show, the artist embraced the opportunity. \u201cI wanted a show at the Zack, but it is a large space,\u201d said eisenberg. \u201cI couldn\u2019t handle the stress of filling it all by myself. I asked Linda if I could invite a friend artist, Ray Ophoff, to share it with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Eisenberg, Ophoff is a long-time participant in the East Side Culture Crawl. In fact, that\u2019s how they met.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany years ago, I visited her studio during the Culture Crawl,\u201d recalled Ophoff. \u201cI had a painting \u2013 a landscape \u2013 in my own studio at the time, and I saw that she had painted the same place, but it was much better than mine. We started talking and became friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ophoff has never studied art formally, or taken classes. He is a salesman by profession and paints in his spare time. \u201cI\u2019m entirely self-taught,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I read a lot about art. My yearly spending for various art magazines runs to $900.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ophoff has 15 paintings in this show, most of them flowers and landscapes in exuberant, uplifting colours. Blown-up to 10 times or more of their real size, his flowers attract viewers with their deceptively simple beauty and their graceful allure. They would gladden any space, and people appreciate the optimism of his imagery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sell almost everything I paint,\u201d he said. \u201cMostly it is through the Culture Crawl or the First Saturday project. People come to my studio. I don\u2019t even have a website.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Ophoff, his art is the only outlet where all the decisions are his alone. \u201cI paint what I want,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I walk through the woods or parks or gardens, I take photos. I always know: this is the image I want to paint. Not the entire photo, just a small fragment of it. My painting is not a tree or a flower. It is about that tree or that flower, my version of that tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

He considers himself an editor of imagery. \u201cI edit everything unnecessary out of the image,\u201d he explained. \u201cWhen I find the perfect image, I always know. It is almost like time stops. I know: this will be a great one. Maybe not my painting of it, but the image itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ophoff\u2019s canvases tell stories. They animate the flora around us and invite our imaginations to unfold. Despite their larger size, his works are, in their own way, as intimate as eisenberg\u2019s much smaller compositions.<\/p>\n

For both Ophoff and eisenberg, Painting Intimate is their first show at the Zack Gallery. The exhibit opened on April 11 and continues until May 11.<\/p>\n

Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The exhibit Painting Intimate, showcasing the work of penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff, is at the Zack Gallery until May 11. (photo by Olga Livshin) The exhibit Painting Intimate introduces Vancouver art lovers to two very different local artists: penny eisenberg and Ray Ophoff. Different in their approaches, their styles and their creative philosophies. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2466,6691,8088,8089,40],"class_list":["post-28542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-art","tag-painting","tag-penny-eisenberg","tag-ray-ophoff","tag-zack-gallery"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}