High and Low
Catherine Beaudette and David Clarkson

September 8 — October 6, 2024
open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 12-6pm or by appointment

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 7th, 2:30—5pm

Artist Talk: Friday, September 20th at 3:30pm

This exhibition is the HERMES debut of its two newest members, Catherine Beaudette and David Clarkson. This joint exhibition is composed of recent paintings, drawings, collages, and sculptural objects related to contemporary notions of the ocean, and of painting. Their two bodies of work are interwoven for this installation display, opening each to new interpretations.

Clarkson and Beaudette share a strong interest in the ocean, climate change, and the language of painting. Both begin their works with an open-ended search that eventually yields a previously unseen, technologically mediated image — one which bridges common experiences and the subjective invention of their artworks. While Beaudette haptically generates underwater photos at arm's length in the shallows and tide pools, Clarkson scrolls an amorphous array of obsolete illustrations, waiting for some certain salient detail to capture his attention.

For both artists, numerous images emerge from the exploratory process, which are then distilled to provide a prompt for a single painted image. Exactly what pictorial qualities determine whether an image will be translated as a painting are vague, and although seemingly crucial, they are left unspecified. Perhaps it is enough to say that, after searching high and low, the placid surfaces of these paintings still hold questions in the depths below.

Catherine Beaudette lives in Montreal, Quebec and Pictou, Nova Scotia, and taught at OCADU from 1989 to 2017. She is the founder of Bonavista Biennale and 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects, Newfoundland; Gallery 202; Pictou and co-founder, Loop Gallery, Toronto. She has exhibited and attended artist residencies in Canada, Europe, and the US. She received her MFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1998.

David Clarkson recently moved to Pictou, Nova Scotia from Toronto, Ontario, where he has taught in the Faculty of Art at OCADU since receiving his MFA there in 2012. Prior 2010, he lived in New York. He has shown his paintings, videos, and sculptures at many galleries and art institutions in Canada, the United States, Brazil, and Europe; and his writing about art appears in several national and international publications.