AGP Blue

Simply thinking about the colour blue washes my body with wave of emotions, and sparks visions of diving deep underwater. At the the Art Gallery of Peterborough, they have brought together 20 artworks from their own permanent collection all sharing one commonality — the colour blue. This exhibit, simply entitled Blue, has put the colour blue, and any reference to it on full display.

The works, which were predominantly painted or printed works on paper, were installed along the walls of the Gallery’s ramped hallway which leads to the third floor workshop space. Included were pieces by artists I have admired Ed in other galleries for years — the likes of Christopher Pratt, and John Boyle. I was joyous to see the final artwork upon marching up AGP’s ramped gallery spaces was Carl Beam’s Albert in the Blue Zone, 1994, an artwork which wielded the colour blue skillfully — using it’s variety of tones and relationship to the natural world.

Equally, the exhibit introduced me to legendary Canadian artists that I have somehow lived without studying prior to my visit to the AGP. These icons included Anne Meredith Barry, Les Levine, and Brian Fisher, who use blue respectively in a way which I feel connects us all to that which is elementally blue — the sky, the water, and veins as seen through our skin.

For me, the break between each of these artworks acted as a space to consider the complexity of blue. Of its psychological, emotional, spiritual and political meanings. In my life, and evidently in the lives of each artist included, the depth of blue far exceeds any other colour. Our individual interpretations of blue lies in the varied contexts brought along by our lived experiences before and after viewing the exhibit.