Judith Lodge | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 25, 1941 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Nationality | American, Canadian |
| Known for | Painting, drawing, photography |
| Movement | Abstract expressionism |
| Website | www |
Judith Lodge (born July 25, 1941) is an American Canadian painter and photographer who often explores how the two mediums play off of and inform one another. [1] [2] Her abstract portraits of memories, situations, events, and people are inspired by the unconscious, dreams, journals, and nature. [1] [3] She has worked in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Banff, Minnesota, and New York, where she has lived for more than thirty years. [1] [4]
Lodge was one of four daughters born to Jean Lodge in Saint Paul, Minnesota. [5] Her father, James, was a chemist at 3M who enjoyed throwing pots in his free time and built a tiny studio in the basement of their home. [5] From as early as the fourth grade, she would bring a large pad of paper to class and tell people, "You make a mark, I’ll make a drawing from it." [5] She completed a Bachelor of Science at Macalester College in St. Paul (1963). [2] [4] She received a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1965), where she was the only woman in a class of 12. [1] [4] [5] In the summer following her MFA graduation, Lodge made numerous trips to New York City, where she attended large Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon retrospectives. [5] These exhibitions were greatly influential on Lodge as they exposed her to approaches in art practice which were not being taken up by the Cranbrook school at that time. [5]
In 1972, Lodge moved to Vancouver, where she would spend the next decade, and began to work less figuratively than in earlier years. [3] [4] In Vancouver, she was friends with many women who were active in the women's movement. [5] She had her first entirely non-figurative solo exhibition in 1977 at the Surrey Art Gallery. [3] At some point, Lodge expected to return to figurative work but became preoccupied by the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the abstract format. [6] Her inspiration from nature is greatly credited to time spent on an island off the coast of Vancouver, which was partly owned by a friend. [1] Here, she explored landscapes and notions of water. [1] Although Lodge returned to the United States in 1980, moving to New York after finding Vancouver a discouraging place for artists, she continually aims to recreate the feeling of nature in British Columbia. [1] [6] Lodge notes how dreams and unconsciousness bring things to one's attention, and claims she began making painted mandalas out of nowhere before finding out she had cancer. [1] Following her diagnosis, chemotherapy, and surgery, Lodge became attracted to photographing trees which had been struck by fire yet were still alive, stating that she felt akin to them. [1] These damaged arbutus trees can be seen in the series Trees Hit by Lightening and Other Fires. [1]
Lodge's monumental abstract works, sometimes as large as 10’x16’, partially derive from 1950s abstract expressionism. [3] She typically utilizes a painterly style where thick layers and ropes of acrylic paint are built up in an almost three-dimensional topography, reminiscent of veins or sinews upon the surface of skin. [3] The texture is built up in three or four steps and certain areas may be reworked in the process. [3] Lodge often uses metallic gold, significantly in works from the "Life Jackets" and "Walls of Eden" exhibitions, symbolic of incorruptibility and sacredness, and confronting its audience rather than receding. [3] [7] She also tends to employ a strong sense of grid organization, as seen in the enormous works from "Walls of Eden." [6] [7]
"As a kid in a museum it looks like there is everything to talk about and paint, but it turns out that there are really only a few things. The seductive part about being a painter, I find, is that life is not a candy jar but rather there are a few central issues toward which one directs one’s life. I can remember being in high school when I first saw a reproduction of the Gauguin, […] Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going … well, there it was—profound philosophic content painted and then restated in words right on the canvas in the most direct and flatfooted war. I was astounded. Certainly, the notion that there are major primal subjects to be dealt with in the subconscious, in myth, in dreams, etc. is part of my painting heritage" - Judith Lodge [5]
Lodge's paintings demonstrate how the boundary between conscious and unconscious can be a permeable membrane. [3] Along with the world of nature and recalling images from life and the unconscious, other topics Lodge addresses in her work include, concerns with intersecting and overlapping areas of change; the eternal and the intangible; documentation of life energies, of what is seen, felt, and remembered; the notion of beauty as not fixed; and beauty tinged with terror and decomposition. [1]
 | This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(March 2019) |
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist who was inspired by the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. She also was a vivid writer and chronicler of life in her surroundings, praised for her "complete candour" and "strong prose". Klee Wyck, her first book, published in 1941, won the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and this book and others written by her or compiled from her writings later are still much in demand today.
Sophia Theresa "Sophie" Pemberton was a Canadian painter who was British Columbia's first professional woman artist. Despite the social limitations placed on female artists at the time, she made a noteworthy contribution to Canadian art and, in 1899, was the first woman to win the Prix Julian from the Académie Julian for portraiture. Pemberton also was the first artist from British Columbia to receive international acclaim when her work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London (1897).
Susanna Blunt is a Canadian portrait artist who designed the most former portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the former Canadian coinage, first issued in 2003. She was the second Canadian woman to design a portrait of a monarch the first being Dora de Pedery-Hunt.
James Williamson Galloway Macdonald, commonly known in his professional life as Jock Macdonald, was a member of Painters Eleven, whose goal was to promote abstract art in Canada. Macdonald was a trailblazer in Canadian art from the 1930s to 1960. He was the first painter to exhibit abstract art in Vancouver, and throughout his life he championed Canadian avant-garde artists at home and abroad. His career path reflected the times: despite his commitment to his artistic practice, he earned his living as a teacher, becoming a mentor to several generations of artists.
Sylvia Tait is a Canadian abstract painter and printmaker.
Gordon Allen Rice is a Canadian artist.
Maria W. Tippett L.L. D., D.Litt ( ) was a Canadian historian specialising in Canadian art history. Her 1979 biography of Emily Carr won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction.
Audrey Capel Doray is a Canadian artist working in a variety of mediums—painting, printmaking, electronic art, murals, and films. In addition to her solo and group exhibitions, her work was exhibited at the 6th Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Painting at the National Gallery of Canada in 1965. A serigraph Diamond is held in the Tate Gallery London and the National Gallery of Canada. Her work is described in North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century as combining "robust social criticism with her own interpretation of humanist theory" and dealing with pop art and the feminist archetype, themes of "perpetual motion and endless transition," and the interplay of sound and light.
Marianna Schmidt was a Hungarian-Canadian artist who worked primarily as a printmaker and painter.
Ellen Vaughan Kirk Grayson was a Canadian artist and educator. She was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan but her time spent hiking in the Canadian Rockies and the Okanagan Valley has shaped her artistic style.
Allyson Clay is a Canadian visual artist, curator, and educator based in Vancouver, B.C.
Sherry (Sherrard) Grauer is a mixed-media painter, sculptor, and relief artist. Her work "is noted for negotiating the boundary between painting and sculpture, in regards to her experiments with relief and surface volume."
Hans Karl Hesse, known in later life as Carle Hessay, was a German-born Canadian painter. Although much remains uncertain of his early years, he immigrated to Canada in 1927, and later studied at art academies in Dresden and Paris. Hessay served as a Canadian soldier in World War II. After the establishment of peace, he moved to British Columbia, eventually settling in the town of Langley, where he took up art again in the 1950s. Some of his early paintings were done in the manner of Romantic realism. The influence of Expressionism soon became significant, with Hessay drawing on both the European and American movements, together with aspects of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. He painted landscapes throughout his artistic life, as well as cityscapes, the Spanish Civil War, Biblical prophecy, and conceptions of the far future. A sizable fraction of his output consisted of abstract pieces. Over time, Hessay's depictions grew more symbolic, one commentator describing his late work as "brazenly metaphysical and apocalyptic". He often made his own pigments, and his style is distinguished by his use of colour, especially black. In 2014, a group of Canadian writers published poems based on his small abstracts. Hessay was the subject of a 2017 documentary film and art exhibition at the University of Victoria.
Charmian Johnson was a Canadian artist and potter based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Torrie Groening, born in 1961 in Port Alberni, British Columbia, is a photographer and artist based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her art practices include drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation art. Groening is an alumna of the Visual Arts department of The Banff Centre and attended Emily Carr College of Art & Design where she studied printmaking.
Judith Schwarz is a Canadian visual artist. Her work has been featured in exhibitions since 1979.
Barbara Spohr (1955–1987) was a Canadian photographer.
Nan Lawson Cheney (1897–1985) was a Canadian painter and medical artist.
Elisabeth Margaret Hopkins, born in Fort Gilkicker, Hampshire, England, was a painter and writer in British Columbia.
Joan Willsher-Martel was a painter of abstract and pointillist landscapes, in watercolour, drawings and oils.
| International | |
|---|---|
| Artists | |
