James Trevelyan doesn’t believe his abstract studies of bird, fish and landscapes are unreflective of reality.
“They express a greater sense of reality,” said the Red Deer College art instructor, whose Wild Things exhibit opened this week at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre.
Trevelyan isn’t after reproducing exactly what he sees. Rather, he tries to capture the spirit or essence of things in nature.
What he depicts is ephemeral and constantly changing — like the feathery motions of a chickadee, or sunlight and shadow flickering across a landscape.
His painting Punk Robin is rendered with a broad, bold stroke of red, topped by a black splotch that resembles the oddly ruffled feathers he observed on a particular bird that returned for several years to his Edmonton backyard.
“He had this funny little top-knot and my wife said he looked like a punk robin.”
In Flutter, Trevelyan uses dynamic brush strokes and the yellowish and grey colours of a bohemian waxwing to depict the essence of flight.
He recalled one of his art teachers at the University of Calgary once laid down the gauntlet, challenging him to go beyond skill to something deeper. “He said, ‘So what if you can draw well? What are you saying? What are you expressing?’ ”
In his Wild Things exhibit, Trevelyan hopes to convey something about the fragility of nature to viewers who see his mixed media interpretations of animals and landscapes.
Sometimes the animals he portrays using paint and collage morph into abstracted landscapes, with the splotches on a fish becoming background and the luminosity of its scaled skin, resembling sky.
“Creativity and nature are two things that I think are vulnerable,” said Trevelyan.
He believes, just as animals are affected by habitat destruction, the artistic nature of children is being suppressed by budget cuts to the arts in public schools. “Creativity is not valued in our culture,” he said a little wistfully.
But art and nature were very valued in the Edmonton home in which Trevelyan grew up. His father, a professional photographer, would take him into the woods and fields at every opportunity.
His naturalist dad possessed “a genuine passion I have rarely witnessed in anyone else,” added Trevelyan, who recalled his father holding his hands in the shape of a viewfinder and saying “look at the texture of that hill,” or “look at the line of trees against the sky.”
He gradually developed his own artistic eye, creating naturalistic landscape paintings. In university, Trevelyan came to appreciate expressionists, and was particularly moved by the colour-blocked works of Saskatchewan artist Otto Rogers.
He now compares his own abstract focus to a reverie or daydream — like staring off into space until the view blurs to the essence of light, shape and space.
Trevelyan created the paintings exhibited in Wild Things over a period of decades (the earliest was done in 1988). In some cases, the studies became the basis for larger works.
While he realizes not everyone “gets” abstraction — which requires viewers to use their own imaginations to interpret what the artist is trying to express — Trevelyan believes, with a bit of explanation, most people will begin to comprehend.
For instance, he remembers giving a long lecture once about one of his paintings, Agriculture in Alberta. The whole time he was speaking, an elderly farmer was staring intently at the piece.
When Trevelyan later asked the farmer what he thought of the work, he replied, “While you were talking about it, I was experiencing my life through that painting.”
“I couldn’t get a better compliment than that,” added the artist, with a smile.
Wild Things, presented by Friends of the Kerry Wood Nature Centre to mark the 25th anniversary of the centre’s art of nature shows, goes to April 27.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com