Sue Schnee

A collection of large pastel on paper works produced by Montreal artist Su Schnee will be on exhibit at the Contemporary Art Gallery until April 30. Formerly of Vancouver, Schnee will be remembered for her videos and performances. Her recent body of work deals with landscape through the medium of pastel à l'écu — dry pastel high in pigment — on semi-transparent one hundred percent rag paper. Schnee’s exhibition is an impressive selection of works from the series Those Who Go Down to the Sea and The Awe of the Mountain. New studies produced during a recent drawing trip to Fiji will also be shown.

Schnee’s Those Who Go Down to the Sea depicts the figure placed in and merging with the landscape. The Awe of the Mountain deals more directly with the landscape, though fragments of the figure continue to emerge evoking the intricate relationship of people to place: “My work intends to convey weight and strength. I think of weight as a ‘measure of importance’ — an invisible scale that determines the consciousness that we bring to nature as individuals and as a community; I think of strength as ‘rest in motion’ — an expression of gratitude for the vigor, greatness, significance and depth of landscape. From a single human being facing another single human being, I now want to discuss the same topic of humanity facing itself through dilemmas within landscape images.”