Tina Newlove is presenting “Nowhere to Land” a solo exhibition of new paintings at the XEXE GALLERY in Toronto November 06 – November 27, 2010. Tina Newlove graduated from McMaster University in the Honours Fine Arts program in 1996. As a professional artist, Tina has been recognized as an artist with vision and an exceptional talent. Her creativity and techniques have brought accolades from curators and jurors who have recognized her potential to make a significant contribution to the cultural life of Canada. Tina’s honest approach to life and art enables her to converse, through her work, with people of all ages, as well as gaining the attention of many art lovers. Tina Newlove has been a Premiere Portfolio Member at absolutearts.com since 2004.
IMAGE
Artist: Tina Newlove
Title: Nowhere to Land
Year: 2009
Medium: Oil Painting
Width: 46 inches
Height: 28 inches
Depth: 3 inches
Frame: framed
Price: US$ 3,000
Purchase this work
Since 1993 Newlove’s paintings have been accepted into over eighty-five juried exhibitions both nationally and internationally as well as receiving awards within the exhibitions. At the Women Made Gallery in Chicago IL, Tina’s image “Mocker” was chosen for use on the invitation for the “Women, Trauma & Visual Expression” 2003 exhibition. Artists from North and South America, Israel and Europe were represented in this show. In January 2005 Newlove received the “Frank Faubert Memorial Award for Art”, a purchase award by the City of Toronto for their permanent collection. In 2007 at the 14th Annual Lakeshore Arts Exhibition, Newlove was awarded First Prize for “City Crowd”. The jurors were enthusiastic with praise for this painting comparing it to works by Klee and Kandinsky. In 2008, another of Newlove’s paintings was accepted into The Arts & Letters Club Juried Members’ Centennial Exhibition being shown first at the Club then going to the Varly Gallery for the month of March. Her work was exhibited along-side paintings by the Group of Seven. Most recently Newlove was awarded an Award of Merit from the Society of Canadian Artists for her painting “Step Lightly” at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
To be face to face with one of Tina Newlove’s paintings is to be confronted with beauty, spirituality, sorrow and struggle. All of these elements are portrayed through complex colours and forms that are expressed through the artist’s sensitive but sure touch. Newlove’s images present intricate patterns of rich, often unusual colours that in many cases are adorned with gold leaf, embroidery or words, giving a richness and preciousness to the works. The movement on the surface is musical, bringing to life what often seem like abstract ideas. But within all of Newlove’s work there is more beneath the surface. Hidden within the abstract patterns are figures, and sometimes behind the paint, text. Although the artist is expressing herself through the movement and vibrancy of the media, there is also a subject there, one that she reveals even while she protects it. The subject may be uncomfortable, one that addresses pain, abuse, despair but the way Newlove treats the figures in these situations is to respect their vulnerability by cushioning them in elaborate colours and forms, and to imbue them with beauty, making them appealing to the viewer and in fact enticing the viewer to love them and protect them as she does.
Tina Newlove is a fun-loving, vibrant and perceptive young woman. Her joyful energy when you are around her is contagious as is her search for beauty and her constant questioning of the world. The intensity of all she feels and thinks is certainly echoed in her artwork. To look seriously at Newlove’s work is to look for a long period of time. Even the smallest paintings have minute details and subtle suggestions that leave the viewer looking harder and asking more questions.
Newlove’s painting is a definite amalgamation of many historical styles and yet she brings them together in a way that is unique. In her paintings we see the chaos and anti-logic of the Dadaists, and the spontaneity and the creation from the subconscious of the abstract expressionists. There are clear references to individual painters like Klimt and Kandinsky. The highly decorative style of Newlove’s paintings is immediately reminiscent of Klimt’s figures as are her use of gold leaf, her focus on the female figure and the Egyptian-like patterns that appear in her work. And yet, her message is entirely different. Her colours, the importance of music and the expression of the spiritual are all similar to the approach of Kandinsky as is what he saw as the fairy-tale power of painting. And yet of course the time she’s living in, her own experiences in the world and her very person are so prominent in Newlove’s paintings that they reveal an individualism that takes these aspects of historical styles and fuses them with her own to create this aesthetic.
Newlove’s approach to her message is steered by her endless searching, the intensity of her emotional response to what she sees in the world and her uncontrollable need to express her reactions and her struggles to find a path where she can find answers. Her desire for privacy is constantly shaken by her responsibility to speak out. In the end it is her struggle to grow, her need to be courageous and take risks that leads her to share her artwork with the public. The beauty she strives to share combined with the ugliness she has seen in the world results in art that is perhaps best described in its most basic way as terribly beautiful.
As an artist, Newlove uses much more than the visual image to express herself. She is a writer, a poet, a performer. Her visual art is inextricably linked to music, words and sounds as well as things she sees in her everyday life. Newlove creates in a world where the sounds on the street influence and are influenced by the images in her head and the objects in her studio.
"Ideas litter my mind like scraps of paper or buzzing flies. While I cherish the beautiful, the delicate, the detailed, the organic and the non-violent, I often paint my experience with violence, despair, the poor and war-torn.” (Artist statement, 2006)
Newlove has always known that her calling in life was to be an artist. She grew up in Georgetown, where she studied with local artist/teachers Doreen Fitzgibbon, Gretchen Day and Wendy Bykus. In grade school, her peers recognized her talent and continually asked Tina for her paintings and drawings from art class.
Born in 1973, Tina has dedicated her life to art and has made her living in her chosen field for the past 12 years, showing her paintings and sculptures in solo and group exhibitions as well as teaching and holding Artists’ Workshops throughout Southern Ontario and Quebec.
Newlove has taken her art a step beyond the “stay in the studio and paint alone” approach by touring with musicians and DJ’s and producing a painting on stage that is a record and a direct expression of the music. On tour with Tribe of One Productions, Newlove has journeyed as far away as Kosovo in coalition with benefit and humanitarian groups such as WARCHILD and UNICEF.
Newlove returned, in September, from a successful two-week tour of the Northwest Territories, where, with Tribe of One, Tina presented Performance Art at schools and community centres. Her day would begin with an hour-long concert where she would create a painting then move on to workshops in the afternoons. Tina completed ten paintings in all then shared her talents and craft in over thirty-five workshops. Tribe of One consists of 2 musicians, Rik Leaf and MJ Dandeneau, native Canadian dancer Buffy Handel and visual artist Tina Newlove. Principles, teachers, students and audience members reacted enthusiastically to each unique, colourful performance. This year Tina has also toured to the Festival du Voyager in Winnipeg last February and the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik in July. In December Tina toured with Trevor Dick and the 5th String BLVD Band in Southern Ontario.
To view a 5-minute video of Tina and Tribe of One, please visit www.tinanewlove.com in the Performance Art section.
View more and purchase Tina Newlove's artwork at absolutearts.com - http://www.absolutearts.com/newlove
(with contributions by Maura Broadhurst, Curator, Latcham Gallery Stouffville Ontario, Art Photos by John Wood Photography www.johnwoodphotography.biz)
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