Charlottetown – Joan Cullen has studied art around the world and exhibited across Canada and on several continents. Now the Island born artist is opening her first ever show at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery: Joan Cullen: wrestling with daemons opens November 15.
Charlottetown born Cullen attended Carleton University and studied painting in Toronto, Ottawa, Paris and Bogota. She has travelled and worked in Europe, Mexico, South America and Africa, and exhibited in solo, group and collaborative exhibitions with her artist-photographer husband Dominique Cruchet, in Canada, France, Germany, Colombia and Tunisia. Their most recent collaboration was in Berlin this past summer.
Cullen returned to live in PEI in 1999. Her first exhibition at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery will present an overview of her mature studio practice.
The subject matter for her paintings and works on paper take their cues from the artist’s travels, including her observation of place and nature in PEI, and what she describes as a “visual geography and a way of seeing the world.”
“Observing and drawing various events of the day here is magical,” Cullen says. “The grouse flying out of the woodpile, herding their young across the road, the light and the wind. These phenomena are immense aesthetic projects -- all the elements of art can be addressed here.”
Joan Cullen: wrestling with daemons is curated by Ihor Holubizky. It opens November 15 and runs until January 25, 2009. The gallery is holding an opening reception for the exhibition Saturday, November 22, from 2 to 4 p.m.
Cutline: The way of the wind, 2005, oil on linen, 200 x 200 cm (recently exhibited in Beijing, during the Summer Olympic Games)
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Media contact: Dan Wall, publicist, Confederation Centre of the Arts, phone (902) 628-6135
Email: confederationcentre.com, web www.confederationcentre.com