The latest work from Guelph artist Seth will be nothing like you’ve seen before.
Seth’s latest exhibit, titled POSTCARDS, came about with him stepping out of his comfort zone and creating art in a way he’s not used to.
It came out great, he said, and the work will be on display at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art on Gordon Street, beginning Nov. 24, and running until Dec. 23.
There will be 40 pieces, based on a series of postcards, in an effort that started about a year ago when Seth did a series of little paintings in a notebook.
“I wanted to create a kind of, the sense of looking at a city from old postcards,” he said.
“I just basically pulled out old postcards and was painting from them, very loosely, in a very sketchbook manner, and I ended up enjoying it, and the paintings came out really nice.”
The postcards themselves are small and intimate, by design. And true to Seth keeping to his Ontario roots, the old postcards he pulled come from all over the province, from Cobalt to Windsor, and yes, a couple from Guelph.
But don’t expect to see the Basilica, Parliament Hill, or any other landmark in the work.
The postcards, he said, acted as more of a “seed of inspiration” for the paintings.
“Sometimes, they’re kind of close, a couple of them are quite close,” Seth said. “But some of them, they stray far away from the postcard and end up being – it might be a street scene, and I end up not drawing any of those buildings, it’s just the basic composition might be all that survives from the process.”
The process itself – painting versus cartooning – was rather unusual to him, and admittedly more stressful than how he usually works.
“I sit down and I draw, I work out the drawing, and then I ink it and then colour goes on top of it, it is very mechanical,” Seth said.
“I know at every stage whether the work is going to succeed or not as a drawing. And this one was definitely much more what I think real painters go through, where there’s a point where it’s unresolved, and whether it’s going to work or not is the mystery.”
But despite that, he said he is very happy with the results.
“Eventually when I do a big art book, they will make a nice little section,” he added.
He won’t totally abandon the process moving forward, but Seth said he’ll go back to doing it in a sketchbook.
