This week on Blank Canvas we return to looking at the Ninth National Exhibition “NE9: The Fruit & The Seed,” with two artists, Anina Major and Natascha Vasquez, both of whose works speak to our ties to the land and how important it is to care and cherish the environment.
It’s an all-female cast in the “Blank Canvas” studio this week. Joining your regular host, NAGB Director Amanda Coulson, are Lauren Holowesko, Director of The Island House boutique hotel on the West End of New Providence (left), and Natascha Vasquez (right), the Creative Arts Programming Manager at The Current, studio and gallery at Bahamar. Natascha is also a painter who is having her first solo show at home in The Bahamas at The Island House this Friday, December 1st.
Bahamian artist, Margot Bethel, explores ideas of femininity and the roles of women from both past and present day. In “Portal: There’s a WHole in the Bucket”, Bethel transforms a collection of mundane, everyday objects into a sculptural installation proposing the idea of the hole and the whole, simultaneously describing aspects of gender inequality, female stereotypes, and objectivity.
Our intern, graduate student Natascha Vazquez writes: John Beadle was born in 1964 on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas. He received his BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Tyler School of Art of Temple University respectively. Beadle delves into various art genres, including painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation. Often, his highly conceptual work consists of everyday materials such as wood, found objects or metal. According to Beadle, “Material – the found, already weathered stuff carries with it a fragmented narrative that makes for very interesting placement possibilities.”
Kendal Hanna, a Bahamian artist and forerunner of abstract painting, brilliantly captures energetic expression and emotion through the intense repetition of line exemplified in Untitled (Rainbow Explosion). Hanna has masterfully engaged in his medium, stretching its ability to exist both boldly and lightly, from heavy black in the foreground to a luminous yellow in the background. Splatters surrounding the composition and within provide insight into the craftsmanship of the work, leaving signs of active brushwork –one may imagine Hanna physically engaging with the paper, paintbrush and paint with high energy, working confidently as his subconscious mind expresses itself on the paper.