Abstract art can be a tough thing to do well, and tougher still to find your audience for, but Vancouver’s Lee Hutzulak has managed to do both.
The multi-disciplinary artist has roots in Vancouver that go back a few decades, having shown art at some of the more reputable Vancouver venues—as well as a few of the more irreputable ones—and now he’s bringing his latest artistic endeavour to Victoria. Although many of the pieces in The Meadow Variations are inspired by the world-famous Stanley Park, anyone familiar with the beauty of the wild, untamed nature here on the west coast will certainly be able to vibe with his paintings.
“I wanted to keep it natural, so there’s no tech in this show at all, unless you count the poster putty I used to hang the paintings,” says Hutzulak. “I get a lot of my paint just as samples from the hardware store.”
Hutzulak rarely frames any of his art; it’s just paint on paper, so for those looking for something a bit crunchier than what you might find at other local galleries, this would be a show worth checking out.
“It’s one of the first times I’ve had a gallery show,” says Hutzulak. “You can’t be afraid to show your art in cafes or record stores, places like that. And trying out different mediums is fun. I was a drawing major [at Alberta College of Art], and then I started trying out paint pens and went from there to just painting on paper. I would take a meandering walk to and from work through Stanley Park and shoot video, and then, looking through it later, I realized it was a goldmine.”
Hutzulak says he finds inspiration for his art in the minutiae of the natural world.
“I’d be in a meadow or in the woods just filming… just making these little nature videos,” he says. “You can get some very cool effects through the camera, like with a massive zoom, you can get tiny little things in focus and everything else is beautifully blurred. The effects that I was creating by filming nature in Stanley Park sort of spilled over into the subject matter in terms of painting, which was something totally new for me. It led to me wanting to explore that great Canadian tradition of landscape painting.”
Hutzulak likes to blend his creative practices together. On the opening night of this current show, he was there with his acoustic guitar, playing his own songs, many of which have lent their lyrics to the naming convention of his paintings.
“I like to pillage my song lyrics to stand in for painting titles, the same way I pillage bits of my Ukrainian heritage, adding in the bright colours and fine details you’d find on an easter egg,” he says. “I love the bright, intense colours, and the crazy little details that I do over them with a pen and ink. It’s fun and it’s bright and it’s intense.”
Hutzulak—known in the musical realm for his work as Dixie’s Death Pool—likes to have a lot of fun with his art.
“It’s not the kind of thing you do if you want to make a ton of money, but there’s nothing wrong with being a dedicated hobbyist,” he says. “I just do what makes me happy to the best of my ability. I’ve grown as an artist quite a bit in the last few years. It’s a therapeutic journey, and if it resonates with somebody out there, then that is the best outcome for me.”
The Meadow Variations
Until Saturday, November 29
Deluge Contemporary Art
deluge.ca