URGENCE
Lorraine Simms has been painting professionally since 1991. Her work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank and the Musée du Québec. She has taught painting and drawing at Concordia University and is currently teaching at the Fine Arts Department at Dawson College.
The word mete (pronounced ‘meet’), the title of one of her paintings, means border — that special place where different people and cultures meet and merge or conflict, where form and content always meet, that lends itself to synthesis, creation. Borders, as they pertain to the visual arts and the imagination, have been a career-long fascination of Simms’, providing both the ferment and neccessity that cause a work of art to come into being. In her own words, “Countless photographs of crowds permeate the media landscape, blurring into a seamless portrait of contemporary experience. Transmitted instantly around the world for local news publications and broadcasts, images from disparate locations acquire the same value as spectacle. I am fascinated and estranged by these representations and wonder to what extent they infiltrate our imaginations and shape our perceptions of identity and place. Certainly, feeling “lost in the crowd” has become an integral experience for many who live in urban centres.
I (try) to negotiate the balance between pictorial description and painterly invention, transforming the instant, ephemeral quality of photography through the slow, imperfect actions of the body. These works create a delay, a reflective space for the viewer; countering the amnesiac effect produced by the visual speed of television news and journalistic photographs.I often choose images that appear iconic, recognizing postures and/or scenes that seem embedded in memory. Eidetic memory (the title of one group of paintings based on different parts of the same photograph) refers to the ability to freeze and hold a moment in the minds eye and then contemplate that instant, examine it with greater clarity. I believe this notion describes the process and the effect of these works.”
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Some of Lorraine Simms’ work is on exhibition at: Galerie Sylviane Poirier – Art Contemporain
372 Saint-Catherine St. West – Salle 234 – Montreal, Quebec H3B 1A2 – (514) 875-9500
Galerie Sylviane Poirier art contemporain dedicates itself to the believe that art should be shared rather than merely exposed. Its spaces can be arranged to resemble a New York loft, or an open-air business environment etc., a concept that allows the viewer to experience the work in intimate, real-life settings.
All pictures © Lorraine Simms
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