Sandra Meigs

Painting as a visual manifestation of language is emphatically stated in Sandra Meigs’s series “Mary,” on exhibit at Deluge Contemporary Art in Victoria, British Columbia. The inspiration for these 13 paintings came from a Nick Cave song, “Sad Waters.” With images from Cave’s lyrics as a point of departure, an evocative and mysterious narrative is developed. While Meigs’s translation is literary, it is not literal: the narrative here is both specific (coming from particular sources) as well as open-ended, with minimalist forms obliquely alluding to actual things or situations.

This work is rooted in a real place—the landscape around Drumheller, in the badlands of Alberta. A particular characteristic of this landscape is scale, where any architectural structure takes on monumental status as it punctuates the barren horizon line. Contrasts of scale create a sense of vastness in Meigs’s modest-sized works, all 20- by-35 inches with pictorial space exaggerated through unexpected juxtapositions of shapes and forms. While scale emphasizes the uniqueness of the prairie horizon, here it simultaneously functions as an emotionally provocative device. In Down the road I look and there runs Mary, a very small, yet prominent, solitary yellow shape sits on the horizon against an intense, large, blue landscape form; a sense of isolation and even bleakness is created by this huge shift in scale. Meigs’s work at first appears joyful and even humorous with its seductively bright colours and cartoon-like marks. In one work, a realistically rendered, small, solitary rabbit provides an almost comic contrast to the larger surrounding abstracted forms. But a lingering focus on any painting in this exhibit envelops the viewer with a sense of melancholy. These entrancing paintings unequivocally portray sadness, and intense feelings are conveyed with minimal form and colour. Moodiness prevails through droopy, languid brush strokes dragged across linen surfaces. The physicality of oil paint becomes a catalyst to a visceral response—the melancholy evoked by these resonant surfaces.

The series “Mary,” originally completed in 1996, was shown again at Deluge, the size of the works an ideal fit for the long, narrow format of the gallery. After what seems like a minor revision (taking off the title panels that were originally attached to the lower portion of the frames), the work dramatically opened itself to a multitude of new readings. Meigs frequently uses text in ways that can range from the directive to the poetic. Two bodies of work recently on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, “Newborn” and “Swoon,” contained examples of both approaches. In “Newborn” a text panel accompanied each piece, while “Swoon” had a companion story that was set in a corner and somewhat segregated from the large-scale paintings. Like “Swoon,” “Mary” now has more poetic resonance with the text appearing separately. Narrative readings are possible without the presence of text and the 2006 presentation of “Mary” allows the viewer to take on the role of a mystery novel reader, traversing this long exhibition space, gathering bits of evidence and piecing together meaning along the way. A story is invented, based on poetic clues within the paintings, and the format and presentation further enhance a strong narrative element. Each painting is made up of two sections—a horizontal panel containing landscape imagery and a vertical one with elements alluding to the presence of a figure. The small scale and the divisions within are like the experience of reading pages from a book.

In addition to the more historical function of painting as narrative, Meigs’s work also explores the formal elements of the medium and this series contains references to major trends in mid-to late 20th-century painting. There are examples of colour field painting with large expanses of a single colour such as in Turning these waters into wine, or abstract expressionist gestures as seen in We go down to the river where the willows weep. In reconnecting with previous work from her own past, Meigs was intrigued to discover the strong relationship of elements in “Mary” to her current work on exhibition at the Susan Hobbs Gallery (“Trip-in: The Ontology of the Imaginative Realm”). A recurring component in Meigs’s practice is a concurrent exploration of concepts concerning narrative and the possibilities of her chosen medium; her work is as much about the story as it is about the paint. ■

Sandra Meigs’s “Mary” exhibited at Deluge Contemporary Art in Victoria from January 27 to March 4, 2006.

Wendy Welch is a visual artist, art writer and Director of the Vancouver Island School of Art.