Emily McIvor

Making art from a young age, Emily has finally given in to the validity of her eye. Trusting and asserting one's aesthetic was frowned upon in her background, however, it has gradually become inevitable only because it is the primary lens through which she grasps the world. 

Emily grew up on Vancouver Island and the gulf islands; cutting her teeth on the old growth forests, mouldering gate-posts and excrutiating architecture of the later part of the twentieth century. A child of the 70s, she liked colouring with all colours of pencil crayons at once. Her art practice has included drawing, painting in several mediums, black and white film photography, a small amount of sculpture in clay and the applied arts of fibre culture and garden design. 

For me, the process of making leads the art. I am in a constant state of wonder regarding colour, light, composition, abstraction. I love rhythm and pattern and even more than that, I love when pattern is just out of reach; like a great jazz composition that keeps me looking for the pattern that may or may not be there. Thus, my art can only be made in the wonder of the moment, when curiosity and bravery walk hand-in-hand, leaning toward something.

Technique is the shovel that digs me out of this mess. A decision about strategy and steps gets me started and then I'm alone in the wilderness, alert for the trail of breadcrumbs or the hunter's heavy step to navigate toward what rings true. 

These paintings are part of a series that explores colourfields and negative space. In addition, they ask if the human eye, in it's perpetual reach for a toe-hold on the surface of the planet finds anything more reassuring than a good old fashioned horizon.