Elizabeth McIntosh

For the past 17 years McIntosh has explored abstraction beyond the conventions established by Modernist abstract painting. She is not interested in exercises in tastefully resolving individual compositions but in unfolding the implications of particular structural inclinations from the history of painting and reiterating and modulating these forms through devices that render them strange. For example, she often commences a painting with an excerpt or passage of a historical painting. This starting point enters into a dialogue with subsequent layers and over-painted forms; at times it is completely covered over as she explores newfound relationships. Through soft edges, awkward shapes, and curious underpaintings, her paintings resist the authority of hardedge geometric abstraction.  Elizabeth McIntosh, who lives in Vancouver, has shown across Canada and the United States including exhibitions at Blanket Contemporary Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and Parisian Laundry in Montreal.  Group exhibitions include PAINT at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Spell: A Travelling Exhibition of Contemporary Abstraction at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.  Her work is in public and private collections all over Canada.  McIntosh is the recipient of a number of grants and awards.  She is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting and Visual Arts at Emily Carr University.