Robert Fee – “Makeshift” – October 2 – 27, 2019
The Gallery at Queen’s Park presents:
“Makeshift”
by Robert
Fee
Exhibition Dates: October 2 – 27, 2019
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 2, 2019, 6-8pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, October 6, 2019, 3-4pm
Free Admission.
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Robert Fee’s recent work starts by punching deliberately uncoordinated keyboard entries into a search engine. Fee is interested in how the Internet interprets and represents the new random “word” created from this process. Usually an indecipherable arrangement of unrelated numbers, letters and characters provide images that initially appear to be random, but at times seem connected. Fee picks from the disparate images and begins to develop a singular image, forming new connections and patterns. The further act of painting hybridizes, edits and distills the scrambled drawing into a specific composition. The resulting piece becomes a represent-ation of Fee’s initial search and eventually finds its own place in the digital landscape, co-existing with its incidental origins.
ARTIST BIO
An artist and musician now living in New Westminster, Robert Fee originally hails from the Okanagan. After completing an Art Degree with a major in drawing and painting, Fee spent many years playing Jazz and Blues in clubs in BC while building his art portfolio. He made the move to Vancouver in the late 1990’s, first studying jazz at Capilano College, then completing a Bachelor of Art Education at UBC.
A high school Art teacher for nearly 20 years, teaching has become a great passion in Fee’s life; he finds witnessing the creative process fascinating, and enjoys seeing myriad individual approaches to visual problems in the course of a school year. He is inspired by his students, and continually surprised at the diverse nature of mark-making.
As for his own work, Fee approaches painting in a way similar to jazz improvisation. His main instrument is the saxophone. The idea of creating a solo, starting from basic structures and developing them in new and unexpected ways, could also describe the way Fee works with paint—in a simple and direct way, trying to express honestly.
