Artists

Described as “hip” in Star magazine, Michael Abraham has had numerous one-man exhibitions, including at the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles, and Gallery Jones in Vancouver. His meaningfully layered paintings are in collections from London to Singapore, and Philadelphia to Amsterdam, and in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery and of Courtney Cox and David Arquette. Montreal born (1965), Abraham graduated from the Ontario College of Art (1984-88), and was teacher’s assistant in Florence, Italy (1990-91), He has been painting full time in Vancouver since 1992.

An extensive portfolio can be seen at
www.michaelabraham.com

Jeremiah Birnbaum studied at the Victoria College of Art (2001-2003) before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Art from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2006. Since graduating Birnbaum has exhibited extensively in both public and private galleries in Vancouver, British Columbia as well as Edmonton, Alberta and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Birnbaum’s work is pro-dominantly black and white iconographic drawings exhibited within an installation format. His work deconstructs and explores social constructs of hegemonic masculinity.

An extensive portfolio of jeremiah’s artwork can be seen at:
www.birnbaumjeremiah.ca

Andrea Hooge is an artist living and working out of her home studio in East Vancouver. She is often inspired by the nostalgia of vintage magazine and children’s books, and her focus is mainly on creating figurative oil paintings and scratchboards. While many of her painted works are on wood or hardboard panel, she also creates wood and scratchboard cutouts to move away from conventional shapes. These have been made to stand alone or to overlap to create larger and more dynamic pieces.

Andrea attended the University of the Fraser Valley, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Psychology and a minor in visual arts. Her work has been exhibited in various group shows in Vancouver, and she has had five solo exhibitions, titled “Dolly,” “Scratch,” “Menno Kitty,” “Easter Eggs,” and “Toy Babies” at Hot Art Wet City.

Andrea can be contacted at andreahooge@gmail.com.

An extensive portfolio can be seen at

paulmorstad.com

Bruce Pashak is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist. Pashak uses imagery, text and technology to create abstracted anti-narratives that both affirm culturally-encoded associations and break free of these limitations.

Influenced by contrapuntal and polyphonic structures, Pashak seeks to crack open his work through discordance. Referentiality is deployed and then disrupted. The viewer is meant to be engaged by the normative values of his reference material and then left to their own devices. The images become an experience, a slippery personal tour through existentialism where the meaningful is unhinged and the meaningless finds its private value.

A Masters graduate of the University of Calgary, Bruce Pashak continues his theoretical inquiries into the construction and dissemination of perception. His studio practice includes combinations of painting, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media work. Pashak’s most recent series employs 3D technological devices to act as conduits for a visceral yet more deeply-felt viewer reaction.

Bruce Pashak lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. His work has been widely exhibited.

You can view more of Bruce’s work at
www.brucepashak.com

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Jay Senetchko now lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia.

He is a University of Alberta graduate (1997 – Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction) and spent several years as a professional soccer player in Edmonton and Montreal before pursuing entrepreneurial interests in Canada and the United States. In 2000 he moved to Vancouver and received a Diploma of Classical Animation from the Vancouver Film School in 2001.

Primarily self-taught, his painting has been strongly influenced by apprenticeships with both Gideon Flitt and Odd Nerdrum. His work has exhibited since 2002 and shown throughout North America and Europe.His side-ventures include the founding of Red Hand Design, a Vancouver design company; Conceptual Design for Streamy and Leo nominated Riese the Series; the development of a book on perspective and composition for the visual arts; and illustration and authoring a storybook.

He has been teaching life-drawing, perspective, composition, and art history at Vancouver Film School since 2002, and teaching painting privately since 2003. He also currently holds independent lectures on the arts in alternating locations throughout Vancouver. Senetchko is also member of the figurative collective Phantoms in the Front Yard www.phantomsinthefrontyard.com.

An extensive portfolio of Jay’s artwork can be seen at 
senetchko.ca

Pennylane Shen holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Culture Theory from New York University, a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from Sheridan College and a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History from the University of Toronto. In the still under-developed field of Visual Culture and Social Criticism, she has lectured at various forums in New York, New York; London, England; Toronto, Ontario; Chicago, Illinois; and Seoul, South Korea. Pennylane’s research and publications discuss the politics of representation, gender and identity in popular culture, film and fine art.

In Vancouver, Pennylane manages the figurative artists’ collective Phantoms in the Front Yard, showcasing the work of prominent Vancouver artists and occasionally holding lectures on art and criticism.

Pennylane is currently an associate of Bau-Xi Gallery and has been the curator of Jacana Contemporary Art Gallery and a representative of The Elliott Louis Gallery in Vancouver for the last 10 years. She teaches Marketing for the Fine Artist and The Photographic Concept at Langara College.

An avid supporter of the non-profit arts sector, she sits on the board for the Vancouver General Hospital Art Collections Committee , Art for Life annual art auction, New York’s International Asian Film Festival and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival.

Pennylane’s external website is thedazedandconfucius.com

The mission of Dazed & Confucius is to provide short-term, project based assistance to non-profits that will address urgent communications, rebranding, social enterprise and/or fundraising needs in a manner that includes immediate implementation and the provision of a foundation and tools for long-term positive effects in these areas.

Jonathan Sutton is a dynamic multidisciplinary artist whose commitment to self-instruction and independence complements a breadth of professional training and collaboration. He started his career as an actor in theatre and film in the early 90s (info at www.godsbaboons.com), and soon ventured into writing, directing, and producing. He meanwhile continued the visual arts practice and study he had established as a teenager, incorporating his evolving relationship with narrative and performance into his work. In turn, he further embraced the elements of composition and imagery essential to live performance, video, film, and animation.

Over the last decade, Jonathan has developed a process combining staged photography, Photoshop editing, and realistic oil painting. He works initially with actors – billed in the titles – through collaborative directing, performance, writing, and interpretation, to stage a live event in a specifically chosen location. This process initiates an interplay between spontaneity and craft that will carry from production on-set, through post-production in the studio, all towards an intended tension of elements … careful set design versus happenstance snapshot, coolly controlled execution versus its unsettled – and unsettling – subjects … discipline versus mischief, realistic depiction versus unreal events … a stretch one way into traditional techniques and media, and the other into discovery and invention…

Jonathan’s extensive international travel, study, practice, and teaching continually reinforce his identity with Canada as a home whose affinities – at once local and global – reflect and enhance his own. His work specifically honours Canadian realism while smuggling visual and conceptual influences from throughout world art history.

Born in 1973 in Alberta, Jonathan moved to Vancouver that year. He studied at McGill and UBC, completing a BA in English Literature (1996), and a BFA in Acting (1997). A Canadian and UK citizen, he shares his home in Agassiz, BC with the neighbors’ cats and his own wife, and two children.

An extensive portfolio of Jonathan’s artwork can be seen at
www.jonathansutton.net

Caroline Weaver is a self-taught painter from Vancouver, B.C. who has spent the last 5 years painting in and around the Americas. She has shown in Ottawa, Calgary, Portland, Philadelphia, Montreal, San Luis Potosi, Philadelphia and some forgotten. Oil paintings of the, perhaps, secret lives of animals, how they might be arranging themselves, relating, celebrating, when we’re not looking.

You can view Caroline’s artwork at:

www.caroline-weaver.ca