Maureen Calkins & Joanna Pettit

Art Passage Exhibition – selected works

March 10-April 10, 2022

This month Xchanges Art Passage welcomes studio artists Maureen Calkins and Joanna Pettit. The Art Passage works can be viewed during regular weekend hours 11am-4pm when the Gallery is open. Please see the What’s On page for current exhibition information.

About the Artists

Maureen Calkins – Studio 7

Urban Stories

Having traveled to 50 different countries has tested my ideas and concepts of how things are done. I have to develop a relationship with the surroundings in order to feel comfortable when I arrive at any new place. I sort through the confusion to make sense of it before I can move on. I accommodate the challenge of maneuvering through our constructed environment. There are the subways, the bus routes, new languages and monetary systems, the friendliness or indifference or the people you encounter, the mood, the technologies, and the economics and political situations to master.

Using complex layering and design, I paint or draw images to achieve an ethereal state. I approach the method of layering transparent and opaque papers, the adding, taking away and covering up with a sense of the unexpected. My pallet includes the grays, browns, blacks and greens of cities with splashes of bright colors: vibrant pinks, yellows, green gold, and sky blues that punctuate the urban landscape. I use my own photographs of the architectural features of city structures.

Process painting and drawing has unleashed an aspect of my life that deals with secrets and hidden stories. The state of being in the unknown feels familiar and I keep trying to recreate it. Traveling is also void of responsibility and gives me freedom. I search for that place in my work not knowing where it will lead but ordered in the end. Julie Mehretu’s’ “concepts of location’s that impact on our individual identity within a community” are relevant to my interest in place, space and time. I call on my own personal experiences and memories to create my images. “Urban Stories” reflects my interest in Architecture and allows me to explore how we as a society design our living spaces.

How we live and adapt to our surroundings in a changing environment is intrinsic to our success as human beings. I thieve in a world of changes and uncertainty, of the unknown and the mysterious. It is never routine.

For more information about Maureen, please see the following links:

Website: https://maureencalkins.wordpress.com/about/

Joanna Pettit – Studio 8

Abstract paintings that explore the interplay of colour, texture and form.

I work in acrylics using a variety of tools to apply the paint on canvas or heavy paper. My paintings begin with marks and shapes and layers of paint. They evolve intuitively by building up layers of collage, and mark making, and washes. My process is one of discovery and pushing the edges of colour and form, always with the goal of evoking a mood or a feeling.