|
|
|
|
Artist Statement:
Artist Statement:
Art helps us remember what we
have forgotten, who and what
we are and why we are here.
Thus my work integrates
stories, myths and dreams as I
explore relationships and
spirituality. Originally the
northern landscape, which for
me represents both wilderness
and wildness strongly
influenced my work ...
Further Information
| |
Artist Exhibitions:
SOLO EXHIBITS
Shifting Transversions, Within
the Labyrinth” (with Mary
Green,) WKP Kennedy Gallery,
North Bay, 2005. This is a
traveling show: Timmins,
Sudbury, Sault St. Marie,
Cobourg
Retrospective, North Bay, 2004
In a Dark Forest, North Bay,
2005
Sealskin Woman, White Water
Gallery, North Bay. 2003
Skeleton Woman, White Water
...
Further Information
|
|
Artist Galleries:
K Bros Arcadian Art Gallery,
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
The Oaks, North Bay, Ontario,
Canada...
Further Information
|
|
|
|
Collections:
J.S. Redpath Ltd., North Bay,
Ont., Canada
Nipissing University, North
Bay, Ont, Canada
Ministry of Correctional
Services, North Bay, Ont.,
Canada
Ministry of Community and
Social Services, North Bay,
Ont., Canada
Ontario Northalnd Railway,
North Bay, Ont., Canada
Ontario Government Ranger
Centre, North Bay, Ont.,
Canada
City of North ...
Further Information
|
|
Commissions:
Coming Soon!
|
|
|
Reviews for Judith Ingwersen:
|
|
|
Reviews of Shifting Transversions:
Within the Labyrinth
Dancing in the Labyrinth: Ariadne Rediscovered
When you visit the Thera Room of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens or the Heraklion Museum in Crete, you are surrounded by marvellous images: women in colourful robes, dancing, a bare-breasted mother-goddess with snakes winding up her arms, and dark-skinned male and white-skinned female dancers somersaulting over the back of a bull in flying gallop. You have entered the world of Minoan Crete, a bronze-age civilization that pre-dates Greek hegemony of the Aegean by more than 500 years, and in whose art female representations outnumber those of the males by a ratio of three to one.
Greek legend tells us that Prince Theseus of Athens sailed to Crete to vanquish the flesh-eating Minotaur, a creature half-man and half-bull hidden by King Minos in a labyrinth under his palace at Knossos. Princess Ariadne betrayed her father by lending the Athenian stranger a sword to kill the beast and a ball of string to guide his return passage through the labyrinth. Ariadne eloped with Theseus by sea, only to be abandoned by him on the island of Naxos, where the god Dionysos fell in love with the abandoned girl and in her honour placed the Corona Borealis among the constellations.
As her name “the very holy one” suggests, Ariadne was not originally the princess known to Greek folk-legend, but the powerful mother-fertility goddess of Minoan Crete. That her worship was absorbed by the Greeks into the cult of Aphrodite, goddess of love and fertility, is apparent from Ariadne’s cult at Amanthus in Cyprus. Here each year, in a curious example of gender “transversion”, a young man enacted the death of a woman in child-bed in honour of Ariadne – Aphrodite, since it was believed that Ariadne, after being abandoned by Theseus, died in childbirth on the island of Cyprus. Significantly, Cyprus is also the birthplace of Aphrodite, an event famously portrayed in Botticelli’s painting of the goddess emerging from the waves.
The earliest mention of Ariadne in Greek literature occurs in Homer, where she is linked to Daedalus, the prototype of the artist and inventor. Homer does not specifically mention a labyrinth, but sings of “a dancing-floor, like the one in the wide spaces of Knossos Daedalus built for Ariadne of the lovely tresses” (Iliad 18, 599). Later vase paintings depict Ariadne performing in the ceremonial Cretan “Crane Dance”, a part of the collective ritual for marrying couples. Other sources add to Ariadne’s fame, portraying her mastery of thread and weaving, practical skills which identify her with the weaving goddess Arachne, whose name identifies the genus Arachnids, the spiders.
In Greek religion, the god most closely associated with both ritual and ecstatic dancing is Dionysos. The nexus of Greek drama is the chorus: their space, the orchestra (meaning “dancing place”) occupies the centre of the Greek theatre, and their dance is always in honour of the patron god of the theatre, Dionysos. Originally a vegetation deity, Dionysos eventually became the god of theatre, wine, fertility, ecstasy and orgiastic release. He often transformed himself into a bull, lending him an iconic connection to Crete, which perhaps explains his association with Ariadne and the apotheosis which restores her from abandonment to immortality. The wildwood companions of Dionysos, his female band of dancing Maenads, represent the liberation of women from the conventions of urban life, the awakening of primeval instincts and the union between humans and nature achieved in the Dionysian cult. The Maenads wield the thyrsus; tipped with a seed-filled pine cone, this wand possesses magical powers of transformation. Smitten by the thyrsus of inspiration, the artist can no more refrain from creating her work than the Dionysian reveller can refuse to dance.
A visitor to Judith Ingwersen’s exhibition “Within the Labyrinth” is transported to a realm unified by the sure craftsmanship of Ariadne’s thread and imbued with the transforming joy of her dancing. Here, organic and human-made materials fuse, northern and Mediterranean landscapes converge, Classical and modern themes entwine, and the ancient heroic quest to the centre of the labyrinth and back merges into a passionate contemporary dance of self-discovery.
Dr Diana Walton
Classical Studies, Nipissing University
November 2005
Musings on Recent Work of Judith Ingwersen
Some artists create a place or a sense of place through highly personal involvement in a setting, time, circumstance, or way of life. They do not necessarily represent these scenes or a way of life directly, but they construct highly personalized images of their involvement with their surroundings or community of thought which amount to the construction of what at one time would have been called the genius loci – the spirit of the place or circumstance. To appropriate a term from literary criticism, they give birth to a mythopoeic moment or circumstance, a place where myths are made. Such is the work of Judith Ingwersen.
The elements of the mythopoeic are usually evident, though sometimes subtly hidden, in the drawings, paintings, collages, and constructions of Judith Ingwersen. The elements of intense sensual involvement in place, the receptivity of the artist, and an assurance of truth in the necessary coming together of experience in what is basically the beginnings of mythology. Through her art, Judith Ingwersen explicitly emphasizes that she is not “only an eye.” Her works are constructs based on experience and memory, and her experiences and memories emanate from not only her recent past, but from what I believe to be her collective wisdoms and memories of an “ancient” past that she possesses from the spirit of connectedness with her “sisters” from time immemorial.
I know that this may sound a bit oblique but I have always found Judith to be a bit “odd” in this regard. She often admittedly chides herself in public situations by saying “I know I’m a bit strange.” This is not just a self-deprecating act to comfort herself with her own smile and the usually muffled laughter turned inward when confronted in an awkward or uncomfortable situation as someone asks her to explain her work. She has no need to explain it. Her need was to make it. I have known her for over twenty-five years and have witnessed firsthand, the evolution of her work as an artist and her quest for a purposeful life. She is a gentle soul, yet powerfully in command of all her expectations of herself, artistic and otherwise. Hence, her work and her life reflect a larger sense of “being”. She is a highly instinctual painter. Her paintings are “done” long before the first stroke of paint touches the panel. What I am saying is.... she may have made these works “before” in another time and place. What I and others see is only the most recent version.
Without getting too deeply entrenched in the argument and my particular point of view, it is easier to visit her works and let them speak for themselves. Each has a voice. They wait for you. They present themselves for scrutiny. Each has a story. And the stories may be old or new. It all depends on your vantage point and how receptive you are to the time, place, circumstance, and way of life depicted.
What you will find, without too much effort, are works that are technically refined yet spiritually releasing and devoid of pretense. To connect with them, wholly and honestly, in the same fashion as they were made, you must not only be a passionate observer but also a willing participant in traveling through their mythopoeic offerings. You will not be disappointed in the journey.
Jim Mroczkowski
Associate Professor of Art & Art Education
Nipissing University
North Bay, Ontario
November 8, 2005
The Compassionate Artist
In her deep compassion for the land and all of Earth’s creatures, Judith Ingwersen simply paints Creation spirituality. Theologians struggle for words to say these things – that Earth is our home and that we must love Her; that gratitude is the way we speak to Her; that God is to be found in every cell of our bodies and in every atom of the universe. Ingwersen knows all this, and places it in front of us with clarity and ease.
These paintings rest on both maturity of heart and innocence, coupled with the skill and
assurance of an artist at the height of her powers.
We consider these paintings, and feel joy.
Donna Sinclair
Author of The Spirituality of Gardening
Senior Writer for the United Church Observer
November 2005
“Within the Labyrinth”, or Judith Ingwersen’s Ode to Joy in the Third Millenium
By Dermot Wilson
Curator
WKP Kennedy Gallery, North Bay, Ontario
November 2005
Under the umbrella of a touring exhibition project called: Shifting Transversions, the artists Judith Ingwersen and Mary Green have created separate artistic statements that create a dynamic, dramatic “conversation” for the viewer. This short descriptive essay is focused on the works of the former artist and upon the body of work that she has titled: Within the Labyrinth. Before considering the works though, it is important for the reader/viewer to understand that this is a fractious collaboration, one that is fraught with personal tragedies, private yearning and differing opinions. Shifting Transversions is about combining oil and water, about blending opposites in a crucible to see what new “unstable” alloy will result. Both artists are experimenting with new media, both are confident arts professionals interested in communicating directly to their viewers. But these are, on the surface, vastly different messages. It is exactly those differences and the conscious and subconscious resonances emanating from the works that brings these two artists together and that makes this such a “mysterious” and engaging exhibition.
North Bay, Ontario painter and installation artist, Judith Ingwersen has been creating “realist” paintings and drawings for over four decades. She is a gifted representational artist who is constantly searching for new ways of “involving” her viewers in the works and the stories they tell. Her recent searches and experiments have led her to study Inuit and First Nations myths, to incorporate the Greek myths as vehicles for her thoughts and also to construct fantastic spaces in the gallery that surround the viewer and invite interaction. For Within the Labyrinth she has constructed a small facsimile of a maze from writings, drawings, mail-art, and fragments from the collaborative and conceptual journey, twenty-one works of two-dimensional art and a hanging work called: Everyday Miracles… Transverse Shifts from Horizontal to Vertical, that invites the viewer to respond to a simple request: “What makes you feel light as a feather?”. The Labyrinthine Path of Mailart is an ephemeral structure that follows Judith’s journeys and thoughts and focuses us on the image of a feminine force using intellect to reveal hope and joy (Ariadne of the Greek myth). For this show, and underlying many of Ingwersen’s works, is a spirit of elation and of spiritual energy. These are lyrical paintings that may be understood as pathways to joy. Images of dancers, loved ones, and swirling abstractions seem all to be communicating this positive life force.
Of the smaller wall works in Within the Labyrinth, there are examples of this life force of the earth and within the artist’s life and even within the labyrinth she has created. There are also works that set up a dialogue between imagined characters, characters from Minoan and Greek myths and the forces of destiny of hope and even of joy. "Walking daily, one step at a time, the Spiritual Path to Wholeness" is an example of such a work. The central “historical” figure is poised to leap and is joyful in the face of choice and change. In this work the medium (mixed media on paper) seems to suggest a narrative. This is a painted scene from a dream, one that leads us forward with great hope and one that
|
|
contact artist
