Laurie MacFayden + Amy Willans: Fighting Normal

Laurie MacFayden, "Once I was Glass so Beautiful", photo/collage on canvas

Fighting Normal brings together the work of visual artist Laurie MacFayden and poet Amy Willans. This exhibition, in Gallery B, explores the impact of mental health issues. It runs concurrently with awareness of an altered world by Richard Boulet and Sue Seright in Gallery A until March 2, 2013. The gallery will be closed on Saturday, February 16, but otherwise is open from Wed-Fri, 10-4 and Sat 12-4.

MacFayden describes her process this way: For me, art-making is not merely a process of visual expression but a merging with the divine spark/vibrational energy that I consider to be the creative process. The resulting work is hard to categorize: I paint serene, post-impressionist landscapes and I paint boisterous, abstract-espressionist colour bombs. I paint electric skies and lively, dancing gardens; my urban and “inner” landscapes are more visceral. I apply paint with a vengeance, using brushes, knives, electric toothbrush, rolling pin … dabbling, flinging, dripping.

Richard Boulet + Sue Seright: awareness of an altered world

Richard Boulet, "The Alphabet Song", mixed media, 2004

awareness of an altered world brings together the work of Richard Boulet and Sue Seright. This exhibition, in Gallery A, explores the impact of mental health issues. It runs concurrently with Fighting Normal by Laurie MacFayden and Amy Willans in Gallery B until March 2, 2013. The gallery will be closed on Saturday, February 16, but otherwise is open from Wed-Fri, 10-4 and Sat 12-4.

Boulet says of his illness: The trauma attached to a mental illness is a hard hand of cards to play and not to taken lightly.  I still feel the psychological wounds of schizophrenia deep in my bones.  With this said, it seems to me that no human being lives their life without psychological wounds of one sort or another.  This is the price of being human.  Perhaps our wounds are what make us empathetic and truly useful to others.