Meagan Lenover

Overcast Willows




Honourable Mention

April 2010
Oil on birch
16X24 landscape orientation
$935

The delicateness of the subject and the movement in this work is a reference to chinese landscape paintings. The paint in this work was applied dry resulting in a matte finish: the trees stand out having been painted fat. Far from being monochromatic, the sky and horizon are actually glowing clouds full of varied hues, against which the menacing subjects of the trees and fowl are cast. The fine willow switches almost melt from the sharp and irregular branches. All this happens above the dull human scene below and the circling of the birds together with the complexity of the treetop draws the observer upward into the massive space of the backlit atmosphere like an inverted vortex. The defining element of this composition is flow.



Looking off Steen Road at McLarty Line in July, 2007




May 2010
Oil on birch
16X24 landscape orientation
$935

An everyday scene in Chatham-Kent, Ontario captured unceremoniously in a snapshot rendered in the realist style. The near and far boundaries of human roads and treelines enclose a wheat field, but the subect of the work is the weedy, interstitial vegetation most obvious to the pedestrian observer. The blandness of the formal land-use is overtaken by the movement and complexity of the incidental inhabitants of this wayside space, which has been painted with brush, pencil, and sticks.



Bunny in the Brambles




June 2010
Oil on birch
16X24 landscape orientation
$935

Based on a randomly-composed snapshot of a young boy following several rabbits into a thicket of blackberries to the side of the municipal park path, this study considers realist ideals. The framing of the image is intended to convey the everyday nature of life and the impenetrable chaos that is only a few steps from our well-tended environments. This painting was executed crudely, with sticks and fingers, and ill-mannered use of brush, to mirror the curiosity of the boy with the wild patch of a domestic landscape which this curiosity propels him into. The "wildlife" he is chasing is itself very tame and domesticated, just as the subject of this painting, a centrally framed image of a lovable child, is easily palatable.



Meagan JoAnn Lenover is a Vancouver-based artist born and raised in Chatham-Kent, near Ridgetown. After studying at Emily Carr University between 2003 and 2006, she explored rural British Columbia for several years, and now resides in central Vancouver. Meagan focuses on oil paintings. She employs traditional materials and techniques including walnut oil paint and hide glue gesso. These paintings were all executed in one layer in one drying session. Meagan prefers subjects and compositions which are not forced into spectacular obviousness, and has a command of depth which makes her works easy to appreciate.





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