July 2015
La Petite Mort Gallery presents
ANDREW MONCRIEF / UNSEEN
July 3 – August 2, 2015
Vernissage Friday July 3 / 7 – 10pm
Live Tunes by DJ Rob Saxon / Soulselecta.ca
Please join us & meet the artist, who will be in town from Salt Lake City, Utah.
Live Talk by Andrew Moncrief at 7pm.
Andrew Edward Moncrief is an emerging artist born and raised on Vancouver Island, presently based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Working in varying media, focusing primarily on painting and drawing with an affinity for classical techniques; utilizing photography as the basis of his predominantly figurative oeuvre. Andrew first started his studies at North Island College on Vancouver Island where he grew up, eventually settling in Montreal after being accepted into Concordia’s Fine Arts Program.
Andrew is an Undergraduate of Concordia University’s Bachelors of Fine Arts with a Major in Painting and Drawing (2013) and has been the recipient of several bursaries and scholarships for excellence in arts: “Peter Robinson Entrance Bursary” 2006 at North Island College, the “George-Balcan Bursary for Painting and Drawing” (Concordia, 2012), the “D.L. Stevenson and Son’s Colour Scholarship” (Concordia 2013) as well as the “Cecil Buller and John J. A. Murphy Scholarship” for Drawing (Concordia 2013). Andrew has had two Solo exhibitions and a third upcoming this July and has been included in several group exhibitions since completing his studies in 2013.
He is currently represented by La Petite Mort Gallery in Ottawa, Canada
Artist Statement:
This work is uncertain, it is existential; the figures–lost and vulnerable–are inevitably me. These paintings have no answers. Instead, they are intended to act as self referential questions that inevitably fail in their ability to be defined. This desire to define the figures relates to a direct desire to define myself, a seemingly impossible task for me. What is a portrait or a self portrait but an examination of identity? It is a theme that I have been investigating for a decade. In an attempt to understand my subconscious–via meditative practices or otherwise–I have searched far and deep. Paradoxically, I find myself further from an answer.
Being lost–in the void, so to speak–is a deeply unsettling feeling. Uncertainty is unsafe. If an awareness or consciousness of our reality aids in defining where we are at any given moment, what does it mean if there is an awareness of unawareness? Stating a resolve for something unresolved is inherently contradictory, a search for that which can’t be found. The point is not the end, but rather the means to the end–the search, the journey itself, and those overwhelming, split-second moments of clarity and enlightenment. The journey is not the attainment of an answer, but the being of the question.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
(July Upcoming) Unseen / Solo Exhibition of Paintings / La Petite Mort Gallery – Ottawa, Canada
2014 STILL ALIVE / Solo Exhibition of Drawings / Galerie LOCK – Montreal, Canada
2014 DE/GENERATE / Solo Exhibition of Paintings / La Petite Mort Gallery – Ottawa, Canada
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2013 POST MORTEM / International Group Exhibit – La Petite Mort Gallery – Ottawa
2013 LE CABINET DES CURIOSITÉS / GROUP EXHIBIT – La Petite Mort Gallery – Ottawa
2013 EXPO D – Group Show – Galerie Dentaire – Montreal QC
2013 DEPARTURE – group painting show VAV Gallery Concordia – Montreal
2012 DIVE/PLONGE – Concordia 3rd Year Drawing Exhibit – Bain St.Michel – Montreal
2006/2007 Biannual Art Event – North Island College – Courtenay BC
EDUCATION:
2013 BFA, Painting & Drawing – Concordia University, Montreal QC
2006/2007 Fine Arts Diploma Program – North Island College, Comox BC
PRESS AND INTERVIEWS:
CityhomeCOLLECTIVE.com — Artist Feature — by Susannah Holmberg April. 24th 2015
http://cityhomecollective.com/artist-feature-andrew-moncrief/
YoungElk.com — Artist Interview — Andrew Moncrief / II by Magida & Samira Kassis. April 15th, 2015
http://youngelk.com/post/116461117196
SUSTENANCE ART BOOK — www.sustenanceartbook.com 2014
Seven things to do in Ottawa on the weekend of March 14—16 — WEEKENDER by Cindy Olberg March. 12th 2014
Art Therapy — DailyXtra by Chris Dupuis February. 15th 2014
Sufferring Selfies — DailyXTRA by Chris Dupuis July. 15th 2013
Featured Artist / interview — Interfold Magazine Feb. 2nd 2013
PRESS: http://cityhomecollective.com/artist-feature-andrew-moncrief/
Words: Susannah Holmberg
Editor: Amy Tibbals
Photographer: Kerri Fukui
COLLECTIVELY, we’re a tad biased when it comes to the work of Andrew Moncrief, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that this is an artist to watch. A recent transplant from Montreal, SLC should count herself lucky to gain a talent of this stature (and jawline). You know that buzzy feeling you get when you’re around a person who’s clearly creating the stuff of genius? Yes, that. That’s the feeling that Andrew’s work evokes.
As a designer for cityhome/COLLECTIVE, I’m frequently tasked with curating art for client’s homes. It’s one of the most important elements of the final design in any given project, and I spend a good part of my day gazing at contemporary art. Nevertheless, I was floored the first time I walked into Andrew’s studio. Andrew is a figurative painter who has a way of working with his medium–the subjects start to dissolve into sheer paint and unexpected bursts of color, such that the painting toes the line of being completely about its subject, and yet not about it at all. It’s just the sheer joy of the brushstrokes.
There’s a complexity and an agony to watching an image corrode in the same way that Picasso’s disturbance of the picture plane rocked the art world. It’s thrilling and haunting to see what you assume to be steadfast and true begin to dissolve, and it feels a bit like magic to watch his paintings unfold. Andrew and I have discovered a mutual love of discussing all things paint and painters, and I’ve been lucky enough to pay him a few studio visits (I’ve even commissioned him to do a piece for one of my clients)…naturally, it was a treat to ask him a few questions about his arresting work.
INTERVIEW:
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: I’m always interested in the moments that convince an artist to become an artist. What’s your earliest memory of being moved by a piece of art?
Andrew Moncrief: My mom was and is still extremely artistic, so I always had that energy around me growing up; we were always doing some sort of arts-and-crafts project after school and on the weekends. Though I think that crux moment for me came when I was about 13 years old–one weekend, my mom took me to Vancouver and we stayed with her best friend who, at one point, took us to meet artist, Dave Edwards. His studio was in Gastown (the oldest part of the city), full of brick buildings and slightly-dodgy streets. We rode a sketchy freight elevator up to a massive, high-ceiling loft that was absolutely FULL of paintings. There was a smell of solvents and paint and resins that I was totally unfamiliar with, and he had two huge 4×6 etherial, abstract landscapes glazed with roofing tar and propped on the wall. They were beautiful, and they made me want to make art like that. I wanted to have a studio space like that. It’s ingrained in my mind as the first experience of what a real artist looked like…what a real art studio was. Dave and I have become really close friends over the years.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: Obvi, your paintings are figurative. But instead of luxuriating in the beauty of the human form when I look at your work, I feel like a voyeur that can’t look away. It’s an exciting and unique relationship you’ve created. Is it intentional, creating an experience for the viewer?
Andrew Moncrief: I’ve always been interested in a more challenging idea of what is beautiful, and more often than not, this has manifested itself in a way that has been interpreted as somewhat off-putting. I often think of Francis Bacon’s distorted heads and his desire to paint the perfect scream, or Adrian Ghenie’s ostensibly grotesque “Pie Fight” series (of people who have had pies thrown in their face). In my previous work, I often sourced images from facial traumatology textbooks; the images were traumatic, but strangely beautiful, especially when interpreted with oil paint. A professor once told me that to create great work we should “seduce visually and repel conceptually,” which is a really fine line to walk. As for the idea of voyeurism, I feel like it’s something that is implicit in the work, especially since I photograph the models myself and more often than not, they exist alone on the canvas.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: You’re a recent transplant to Salt Lake (woot!). Has this affected your work?
Andrew Moncrief: I definitely think that moving here has affected my work. Moving to another country and climate has been a very big adjustment and a really expansive experience. The word that comes to mind when I think of how my work is changing is “scale”. I have a studio space that is four times the size of that I had when I was working in Montreal. I have 25-foot ceilings in this old warehouse (Captain Captain), so I can easily unroll twelve feet of canvas on my wall and fly at it. This new space has allowed me to really up my game, I’m producing more work than I have ever produced before. I’m also working more hours in the studio than I have before, and I’m challenging myself by working larger. It’s super exciting, considering the possibilities that will present themselves for the next body of work.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: You and I have chatted about this before, but there’s such a cool relationship between representation and a certain materiality of the paint in your work. What excites you about the moment an image breaks down and becomes just paint?
Andrew Moncrief: What excites me most is exactly that moment you talk about…the moment the painting seems to break apart and simultaneously come together. It’s been my interest for years now, and I haven’t fully figured out how to balance it technically. I try to imagine the brushstrokes as Legos–you build up the painting in pieces and then smash it apart. There’s that moment of impact while the whole thing is exploding to pieces, but it still holds its form. It’s difficult to articulate. It’s solid but disintegrating at the same time, materializing AND dematerializing. It’s an ongoing investigation, for sure. Painting is a slow medium and the ideas only seem to make sense in time, when we can step back and have enough hindsight to see the bigger picture.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: What role does color play in your paintings? (Because I love those irreverent pink drips!)
Andrew Moncrief: I have a contentious relationship with color. I frequently feel as though I can never get it to do what I want it to do…and then somehow it just comes together. I usually have a general idea of what I want the colour scheme of a painting to be, but it quite often changes as the work evolves. I am obsessed with glazing and layering colours and seeing how they interact with one another, of creating optical mixtures of newer, richer colours. I have been looking at a lot of Old Master paintings (Caravaggio, Reubens, DaVinci). They used colour in a very elegant way, with beautiful complementary contrasts…colors that are so rich you want to reach your hand into the painting and touch it. I always want my colour to be something beautiful and seductive…to balance the sometimes graphic subject matter.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: I can’t help but notice a certain sense of the spiritual in your newer work. Am I wrong? Do you believe in God?
Andrew Moncrief: Yes, I’ve definitely been playing with the idea of the spiritual in this newer work. I had a very non-religious upbringing–my parents were adamantly non-religious. I don’t recall ever attending church as a child, and I never really believed in God. It’s something that’s shifting a bit in me. Which is not to say that I believe in God…but I do believe that there is something beyond us, and I know there are spiritual practices (a.k.a. meditation) that can do wonders in helping us all slow down throughout our day. I’m a very visual person, so visual expression has always been a means of understanding. Since we are all existential beings and we all learn in different ways, I think this is just my way of trying to understand my own growth. Historically, religious painting has always served some sort of dogma, and the hand of the artist has inherently had a presence in the works of art. It’s as if we can project ourselves into the painting (I often think of Conversion on the Road to Damascus), and it’s religious but not explicitly at first glance. I guess I’m trying to figure out how to articulate this in my own work. I still can’t quite pin it down–and maybe I never will–but I will keep trying to paint my way through it.
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: I always define the most inspirational artists as the ones who make me want to make art (you’re one of them, by the by). Which artists make you want to make more art?
Andrew Moncrief: A lot of artists come time mind, both contemporary and historic, and almost all of whom are figurative. Caravaggio, Valentin De Boulogne, Diego Valesquez, El Greco, DaVinci, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, Georg Baselitz. I think it’s super important to look at these Old Masters because their works are hundred of years old but still so relevant. The contemporary artists I adore include Adrian Ghenie, Jenny Saville, John Currin, Nicola Samori, Justin Mortimer, Cecily Brown, Michael Borremans, and Andrew Salgado (who I am lucky enough to know personally and does really amazing work).
cityhome/COLLECTIVE: If money were no object, what kind of art would you make? Or do you think restrictions make your work better?
Andrew Moncrief: For me, it’s not so much a question of what kind of work I would be making, but rather a question of what would I be able to learn and from whom. If money were no object, I would attempt to track down each and every one of the living artists I mentioned above and talk them all into letting me apprentice for a couple of months! I would LOVE to work beside each of them, learn from them, and get their feedback on the ways in which I can grow as an artist. As for restrictions, I think they’re important. We all need deadlines, and–paradoxically–working within boundaries often times provides more freedom than when everything is possible.