Robert Linsley

These oil paintings by Robert Linsley at first glance appear to be just another representation of the British Columbia landscape which has influenced the life and work of artists in this region for decades. However, Linsley does not lead the viewer into a pastoral or idyllic setting but into a familiar and yet vaguely disturbing environment. Several of the large canvases portray ominous and foreboding mountains in heavy browns and ochres against a bleak grey sky which invite and yet threaten a human presence. Other canvases depict scenes of a pale grey river laden with log booms and barges winding through a landscape of farmland and sawmills characteristic of BC's Fraser Valley. This rather bleak but realistic picture does not end here. The mountain scenes are warmed by a symbol which represents the presence and persistence of human existence, fire, and the river scenes are the backdrop for, in one, a portrait of a man and child and in another a young woman. In this exhibition Linsley invites the viewer to address the current economic, political and social conditions that contribute to an apparent alienation of humankind within nature.