It is as if one can still the stream long enough to see the beauty in the transparency of the light passing though, this is the joy in Janet Read's paintings.
Read's exhibition "Atmospheric Abstractions" runs Mar. 5 to 26, 2016, at Navillus Gallery in Toronto. The works of the Markham, ON.-based painter are soft-focused views of misty landscapes, vaseline-smeared lens-like sky and sea, cloud and waters.
That is if one was to look directly into them and search for the physical, the tangible atmosphere. They have heritage from JW Turner and Monet but they are devoid of the human hand; neither Turner's ships nor Monet's curated gardens are evident. Read shows only the wild at large, devoid of separation, devoid of line.
But these wild works are also metaphors for the abstract of modern living with its mass of media, its fluidity of messaging containing no hard truths just the fuzziness of uncertainty. The information is liquid. There are no walls, just wave after wave awash.
Read seems to be saying, this new now world without borders, in all its layering transparency is warm, welcoming, wondrous and wholly our own. Read perceives a plausibility of a pattern at the centre of our techo-age. She perceives a beauty, she presents a soft truth; in this flood there is familiarity.
