Liz Pead
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Þingvellír, Path to Oxará, 2011 This piece is from a series that Liz is working on related to Þingvellír National Park. Liz has been asked by the National Hockey team in Iceland, Björinn to return in the fall 2012 and make art for all 3 of their arenas.
PRAIRIE FIELD, 2012 To read Michael Warren's article in the Toronto Star about Liz Pead and Roch Smith's exhibition, please click on this link: |
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ARTIST STATEMENT: hockey + art = canadian landscape The wild landscape that the Group of Seven painted was itself the product of the search for Canadian identity as much as it was the footprint of humanity. Forever altered by industry; the land itself was sculpted to allow for easier passage of logs, trains and ultimately, adventurers and conservators alike. The construction of roads and railways gave Canadians a way through their landscape that they had not witnessed before. At the same time, all this technology mediated the landscape it served. I wanted to find a Canadian material to use in my paintings that would address this mediated landscape in a way that meant something to me. Old, broken hockey gear does this and adds to the work a layer of nostalgia. This material also satisfied the environmentalist in my head - all this plastic and metal wasn’t being unceremoniously dumped back into landfill – it was being used instead to glorify the landscape we Canadians hold so dear. Everyone in Canada has an opinion about hockey - from the intentionally ignorant, “I don’t follow it,” to the hockey zealot that can recount all the stats and scores. Learning how to listen to people as they react to my work has often engaged a discussion around Canadian identity and hockey. Getting Canadians to engage in a discussion about their identity is not as easy as it seems, the closer you get to the heart of the thing, the more complexities appear. The use of staples and drywall screws hold together jerseys, socks, helmets and shin pads and allow me to speak about a national mosaic made up of different bits. From a distance, these paintings seem homage to their roots and Canadian Landscape painting, up close they are as diverse a surface as we are a nation. Liz Pead, 2011 |
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In Liz Pead's hockey art animation, even the animals of Canoe Lake don't know what happened to Tom Thomson... |
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Liz Pead holds two diplomas in Textile Design from the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and has a background in theatre. Since moving to Toronto, she has completed her BFA at OCAD in 2007, graduating with Distinction Honours and the Medal in Drawing and Painting. She attended the Memorial Cup in Brandon last May, taking up residence in the arena hallways and Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, sharing her work and techniques with the CHL community. The landscape and the environment play large roles in Pead’s work combining high and low culture as ways of expressing and constructing Canadian Identities."I wanted to find a Canadian material (broken hockey gear) to use in my paintings that would address this mediated landscape that Canada is becoming. Gone are the days of the pristine wilds that the Group of Seven painted; if they only ever existed in our collective cultural memory. I’m haunted by the images of Ed Burtynsky, Douglas Coupland and others depicting the changing landscapes of industrial encroachment and urban sprawl." The Gladstone Hotel hosted her latest large-scale foray out of the Studio, “Barilko: Lost and Found”, which Bidini wrote about in his New York Times hockey blog. Liz Pead lives in the Annex with her husband and is a hockey mom; twice. Her studio is located in the Queen St. West Art+Design district.
HOCKEY AND ART TALK WITH LIZ PEAD BY NIKKI THÉRIAULT, HOCKEY EXHIBITION 2011
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