Geoff Farnsworth

"My paintings explore a relationship between figurative and abstraction in order to meld unconscious probing and stylistic innovation with a meditative figural base. It is important to me that the paintings work well as collections of shape, colour, texture, and energy, while also building a compelling image. Working with people and objects from my personal world as well as from classical and contemporary culture, I focus on maintaining a balance between plan and accident, known and unknown, restraint and exuberance. I ignore the portrait or landscape or whatever it may be turning into as often as I try to see it. I do not want the parts to be overly submissive to the whole. I want a blue smear of paint through a head to be as much of an “object” in the painting as the eyes. I like it when a chunk of head, disappearing into a corner of abstract landscape, serves as strongly to help the viewer feel paint texture as to be reminded of a skull. My figures look out as much into mindscape as landscape." Sixteen of my paintings made over the last 6 years in 4 cities (New York, Toronto, Thunder Bay and Niagara Falls) will be featured alongside the work of 2 Swedish painters: Peter Dahl, a renowned artist and household name in Sweden since the 1970’s, and Eva Zettervall. The exhibition space is a vast 2 level zone that was once a horse stables, being appropriate since my most recent paintings explore different directions with the motifs of carousel horses and a dragon-faced rocking horse. In certain ways I am revisiting my Toyflesh series where images of children and partial figures ride enigmatic beasts to reinforce themes of mystical journeying and spliced consciousness in environments both landscape and mindscape. 8 Foot, 9 Months. Oil on Canvas, 28 x 96 inches. Anti-Gravity Beverage, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 36 inches (Muse Gallery, Toronto www.musegallery.ca) The A-OKay Cafe, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 60 inches. SOLD Hanna & the Fish, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 30 inches. Available at Loch Gallery www.lochgallery.com Sherry, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 30 inches. SOLD Icecream Girl #3, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 24 inches. SOLD..................................................... Blue Willow, Oil on Canvas, 34 x 46 inches. www.canvasgallery.ca