A Vancouver Island artist has slowed down and stopped moving pictures, and has found and created art from the still images.
Yvonne Vander Kooi's solo exhibition 'Still' opens at the Old School House Art Centre in Qualicum Beach this week.
A year and a half ago, following her father's death, the Nanaimo artist recovered more than 20 eight-millimetre film reels of home movies from the 1950s, '60s and '70s, going as far back as her parents' emigration from the Netherlands to Canada. Her father was excited by home-movie technology of the era and Vander Kooi remembers him often having the camera on his shoulder.
"Not just special occasions, but kind of all the time. It actually drove us a little bonkers," she joked. "But it was a real treat to recover these film reels."
During her many hours digitizing the reels one by one, the artist had time to think about the differences between moving images, still images, and painted canvases.
"The film stills are moments that never would have been intentionally captured by a still camera," she noted in an artist's statement promoting her exhibition. "People blinking, moving out of frame, tilted horizon lines – these moments between the ‘main events’ catch my attention perhaps because they are just as much a part of our existence as more carefully composed photos."
Sometimes it was easy to identify the stills that she wanted to paint. The emotions she felt watching the old home movies would influence the stills she was drawn to or her excitement to paint particular pieces, but she also recognized that translating certain moving images to still ones didn't always work.
"I did need to pay attention not just to the scenes and the familial bonds awakening, but what are some of the interesting pieces going on here around composition or interest," she said. "What does it evoke for me, what might it evoke for the viewer?"
The exhibit includes series of paintings in which Vander Kooi painted three successive stills, for example her mother's changing expressions upon receiving a silk kimono as a Christmas present, and said it was an interesting process to paint three works that are almost the same.
Even though the stills depict moments and memories specifically from the artist's life, she thinks the images are accessible to any curious gallery-goer, as she hopes people will be able to see themselves, their families and their own experiences in some of the work.
Some of the themes of the exhibition, the artist said, are universal in an era when people are bombarded with images in their day-to-day lives, and moments and memories are documented differently than they were in an era of a movie camera on a parent's shoulder.
"That's relevant to any viewers, the idea of slowing down time and spending a lot of time with one image, and what does that mean, considering that has really changed over time," she said.
WHAT'S ON … Yvonne Vander Kooi's 'Still' will be at the Old School House Arts Centre from July 2-Aug. 23. An opening reception will be held July 11 from 4-7 p.m.
