Artist: Les Ramsay
Exhibition title: Local Cherries Sweet Corn
Venue: Towards, Toronto, Canada
Date: February 7 – 29, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Towards, Toronto
Towards is pleased to present Local Cherries Sweet Corn, a solo exhibition by Les Ramsay.
Taking its title from seasonal roadside signage found near the artists’ home in southern British Columbia, the exhibition weaves together Ramsay’s longstanding interest in vernacular imagery, the historical and formal language of painting, and our relationship to the natural world.
In this most recent body of work, Ramsay directs our attention to the local landscape. Focusing on roadside fruit stands, provincial parks, and wildlife native to the BC coast, he grounds his work in a sense of place, while at the same time creating complex, often fantastical compositions where seemingly disparate elements co-exists on a flattened singular plane.
Playing with surface, colour, and form, he imbues the paintings with an almost frenetic energy, employing brush strokes and mark making that oscillate back and forth between the digital and physical sphere.
Tofino J56, Desolation Sound Effects, (named after a baby orca first spotted off the coast of Vancouver Island in 2019) features a seemingly hastily rendered whale jumping high above a fictional landscape. Night Fever, The Asylum at Dusk, is a dark blue cross-section painting of ocean featuring a ‘fever’ of stingrays and skates below a loon.
Other works include chickens, clocks, fruits, flowers, and numbers combined in ways that often drift into the psychedelic and surreal.
Fundamental to Ramsay’s practice is an interest in the ways in which images are constructed and disseminated, and how that in turn shapes our experience of the world. Combining elements from his external surroundings with a rich, internal dialogue, he creates elaborate compositions that exist as sort of hybrid realities – piecing together disparate puzzles of this contemporary moment, in search for pathways to move forward.
Les Ramsay was born in Vancouver and studied fine arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and completed his MFA in Painting at Concordia University in 2015. He has taken part in group and solo shows such as A Motion for a Notion Commotion, presented at Chernoff Fine Art in Vancouver (2018); The Adventures of Atrevida Reef, presented by Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montreal (2019); Li Salay, Indigenous group show at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton (2018); Border X, at Winnipeg Art Gallery (2016), The MacKenzie (2018), AGA (2019); and
Keep the Glove at Sunset Terrace in Vancouver (2014). He also curated his first group show titled The Sun Poured in like Butterscotch at Projet Pangee, Montreal (2019). His works can be found in many private and corporate collections such as The Claridge Collection, Medcan, the TD Bank and RBC collection. He has exhibited in Canada, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, as well as in the US.
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Fowl Play, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Fowl Play, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Fowl Play, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, West Cost Cruster, 2016, Oil and Paper on Canvas, 16 x 12 in (40.5 x 30 cm)
Les Ramsay, Whistlin’ and a Howlin’, 2016, Oil on linen blend, 16 x 12 in (40.5 x 30 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Molten Tides, 2020, Oil on linen blend, 20 x 16 in (50 x 40.5 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Hook, Line and Stinker, 2020, Acrylic with beach sand and aquarium pebbles on west coast drift wood, 22 x 28 x 24 in (55 x 71 x 60 cm)
Les Ramsay, Christopher and the Dancing Daffodils, 2019, Needlepoint, Embroidery: 15.5 x 12.5 in (41 x 31 cm), Frame: 22.5 x 19.5 in (58 x 50 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2019, Oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2019, Oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, Tofino J56, Desolation Sound Effects, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Tofino J56, Desolation Sound Effects, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Tofino J56, Desolation Sound Effects, 2019, Oil on canvas, 62 x 48 in (158 x 122 cm)
Les Ramsay, Strawberry Alarm Clock, 2019, Needlepoint, Embroidery: 7.5 x 5.5 in (19 x 14 cm), Frame: 15 x 13.25 in (58 x 50 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, The Cheshire Croupier, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Night Fever, The Asylum at Dusk, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Night Fever, The Asylum at Dusk, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Night Fever, The Asylum at Dusk, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
Les Ramsay, from A to Zzzz, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, from A to Zzzz, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, from A to Zzzz, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, from A to Zzzz, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Les Ramsay, Local Cherries Sweet Corn, 2020, exhibition view, Towards, Toronto
