Karen Maiolo, an internationally recognized Banff-based painter, has been with Canmore’s Elevation Gallery for about 10 years, but returns after a hiatus with her first show in four years.
Her show is rightfully entitled: A Matter of Time.
Maiolo usually works in natural forms, whether it’s forests or natural environment, but, for one of her new pieces entitled Blue Elk she wanted to get away from natural colouring and explore vibrancy in the natural world.
“I usually work in more subdued colours, and then it started to remind me of a Japanese tapestry and I went along with it and that’s what came out of it ... every once in while it happens and there it is and comes through,” Maiolo said of the visually striking work.
If you go looking for a thematic or linear line in A Matter of Time you won’t find it, and the artist is the first to point that out.
“I don’t like working in themes and I don’t really think that way either, because I might start working on forest paintings and then you move to something else, you’re attracted to something else and go with it, and then you move back,” Maiolo said.
“I don’t think I move in a linear line – It’s like taking a walk, you’re walking down the street and then you get sidetracked by something and then you get invited into a house by someone and then you go walk down to the river – there’s a logic, but in another sense there is no logic.”
She relates it to driving on the highway your whole life and never taking a walk. Or taking a canoe down the river and watching the cars fly by.
“They’ve missed everything that’s happening around them – you think you see it when looking out the window of your car, but you don’t, you’re not experiencing everything around you,” Maiolo said.
Another piece entitled Paradise Lost depicts a forest she grew up in, a space she’s had a relationship with since a child.
“It’s in Hamilton, right on the Escarpment. I grew up right on the edge of the woods, a conservation area, but it’s so changed now. The area in the painting still exists, but it’s so full of signage now and prohibited; ‘you can’t walk here,’ you can’t use this trail,’ it’s so limited now,” Maiolo said.
“I think I wanted to do it because I do a lot of forest paintings around here. It’s about their differences and my relationship with them. They have different personalities, with different light, different trees, I wanted to do that, different lines, it’s completely different.”
She’s also the first to admit she feels uncertain about this show, because time is out the window, with a bit of tension and stress self-created by leaving her comfort zones – approaching things like she normally doesn’t; trying out colour schemes that she hasn’t worked with before. But she likes the challenge.
“I can’t second guess, I have to put work in, but it’s just the time element. Things have to move in their own way, you might change a colour the following day because it didn’t feel right, and it didn’t work, and the way I paint, it’s a pretty slow process. I need drawing time and then put a wash on top and then you need more drawing time,” Maiolo said.
At the time of this interview, she was still working on Evening Out with Two Chairs, wanting it to be in the exhibit; but you can’t rush work.
“The image came from a walk that I took one night on Grizzly (Street) in Banff. It was the lighting; it’s actually a garage, but it was more the way it was lit. I don’t like using the word sacred space and I’m not into yoga, but it was like a really quiet, holy place when I walked by,” Maiolo said.
“There were two chairs sitting there and the way it was lit, it wasn’t like a garage, it sort of transformed. I don’t normally paint architecture, it’s very linear, but it was just that sense of light and space ... I want to put it in but it might not be ready.”
Time will tell. The opening reception for A Matter of Time takes place Saturday (May 6), from 2-7 p.m. at Elevation Gallery with Maiolo in attendance.
