Angela Leach: SKIP

March 2 – April 10, 2005

New paintings by Scarborough based artist Angela Leach grab the eye with their vibrant juxtapositions of colour, creating the optical illusion of a pulsating universe.

These large canvases which are made in a careful and deliberate manner are comprised of curving ribbons of colour laid adjacent to each other to weave a continuous expansion and contraction of the picture plane.

Drawing from her background in textile and specifically weaving (she studied textiles at Sheridan before moving on to fine arts at OCAD), she preconceives her palette and codes the process by which the colour will appear across the painting as if still engaged in this industry. All this isn’t always apparent in the finished work as the overall effect is of a random colour configuration tightly tuned to a three dimensional structure.
The paintings seem cropped from a continuous universe of endless repetitions, as if we are glimpsing a prescribed section of the infinite. Not that the eye expands out of the frame; on the contrary, it seems to be held or even mesmerized into the cortex of its sensual, curvilinear gesture.

Skip, the open-ended title of the exhibition, suggests the wave formations that change or skip in their colour progression through the canvas: a visual manifestation of the invisible realms that resonate in our daily lives.

- Tony Massett

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