The RBC Canadian Painting Competition 2007

Helping Canadian professional visual artists paint their own picture of success

Thanks to the participation of the many artists across Canada, the 2007 competition was a resounding success! The quality of the over 1000 entries vividly illustrates the exceptional skill of Canada’s emerging professional artists.

The 15 finalists had their work featured in public exhibitions across the country. The national winner and two honourable mentions for 2007 were:

National Winner

Arabella Campbell - Vancouver

Arabella Campbell’s painting address the materials of painting itself: canvas, stretcher and gallery wall. In Physical Facts Series #6, Campbell meticulously reproduces open areas from the reverse side of the canvas, with raw cotton mimicking the form of its stretcher. Pleasing in its symmetry and window-like effect alone, this painting also has a witty, Möbius-strip-like conceptual effect, turning painting backwards and inside out. Rather than camouflaging studio materials, Campbell exposes them. And rather than creating illusion that transports viewers to other worlds, Campbell directs them to the present place and time. Her intelligent results both critique and glorify the medium of painting.

Honourable Mentions

Chris Millar – Calgary

Chris Millar’s paintings are densely packed riots of pop imagery influence by TV sitcoms, comic books, DIY (do-it-yourself) punk rock and video games. Starting from an absurbly Pynchon-esque narrative, FACEBITOR portrays a tale of Norwegian black metal, small-town Alberta, supernatural forces and alternative denistry. Though Millar’s darkly humorous plotlines are difficult to elucidate in his final images, their sensibility translates in spades. And while the sprawl of these paintings, which spills over the boundaries of the canvas in several directions, may not yield intelligible specificity, it points to the infinite swaths of detail – and indeed attentiveness – it takes to tell or hear anybody’s story in full.

Melanie Authier, Toronto

Melanie Authier’s paintings probe the ways that landscape is presented to us and the sometimes contradictory ways we experience in it the 21^st century. In Apocalyptic Picnic, small fragments of blue sky and green meadow – elements perfect for an outing – sit in a mass of abstract forms, explosions of psychic and creative energy. What do we expect from “lovely” landscapes? What romantic feelings could we project onto them? How do we presume they might improve our lives? Authier makes these questions of emotional desire, projection and difficulty visible within her landscapes. The result is messy, real-life feeling in picturesque postcard-rack fantasy.

	2008
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	2003

Painting image in the web banner is courtesy of Ben Reeves. 2001 Winner