REMAINDER / SCOTT BOWERING & DEIRDRE MCADAMS

UNITY GALLERY

FEBRUARY 27/28 2015

Frontier Light Lines: Scott Bowering and Deirdre McAdams

Sean Alward

A line drawn on a page or laid down on a canvas is never just a line. It is both itself and an indicator of something else, some subject beyond itself. In this sense it is a kind of border or frontier. We can clearly see the line laid out before us but at the same time it indicates an invisible thing beyond the frontier of visibility. This is especially true in the work of Scott Bowering and Deirdre McAdams, two artists who make extensive use of lines to make their paintings. We can see the lines they employ and appreciate them as such, but these lines also conjure up something additional, something “other.” The question becomes: what is that “other?”

At first glance the vertical stripes in Scott's paintings appear big, bold, and black. Made from an idiosyncratic process of laser transfer decal rather than black paint, they seem to be the primary substance and subject of the image. However, they soon appear to oscillate, causing vertiginous bodily sensations and optical hallucinations. Patterns of colour dance between the black lines and the light painted spaces become animated. These light spaces are also white lines, equally as important as the black ones.

For Deirdre, hidden lines form the basis of her paintings. She begins with doodled line drawings on paper which she then transfers to canvas. These lines become the edges of spray painted shapes, sculpting illusory forms on conspicuously flat canvases, pushing space back and forth. This conjured space oscillates between background, middle ground, and foreground.

In both their work, the spatial distinction of where things are is unstable. The frontier between what is depicted and what we perceive is likewise ambiguous. The sense of a line as a frontier marker can be extended from 2D lateral space (side to side) to 3D volumetric space (above and below). The canvas itself is a line separating the actual space of the world from the illusory space of the image. However, in the case of Scott and Deidre's paintings where is the illusory space really located, on the canvas or in the viewers heads? Can a distinction be made between physical space and psychological space? It seems impossible to find a clear line between inside and outside the viewer's head since perception itself confuses such distinctions. So, if there is no frontier line anymore, what happens to the idea of an “other” as existing on the other side of that line?

A different metaphor for the line which may be helpful in dealing with this question is that of the line representing light, and therefore the very act of visual perception since we cannot see without light. The “intromission theory” in modern science tells us that light emanates from a given source such as the sun or a light bulb, travels in straight lines, reflects off things, and then enters our eyes. In this way we perceive the world outside ourselves.

A much older theory of light, known as the “emission theory,” suggests the exact opposite. This theory promoted by Plato and Euclid states that light rays emit from the eyes of the observer, illuminating objects of perception in the external world much like a flashlight casting its beam through the darkness. Although this theory may not be accurate according to modern physics, it does contain some metaphorical or psychological truth in terms of how we perceive the world around us. Vision is not simply a matter of objectively receiving information from the world outside via lines of light entering our eyes. We see what we think and we think what we see. Once again, the frontier line separating interior and exterior reality becomes diffuse and the idea of a discreet external “other” becomes uncertain.

The straight lines in Scott's paintings and the undulating edges in Deirdre's are at the very least about the viewer's experience of perception. Extended consideration of these lines reveals that although apparently contained on rectangular canvases, they actually extend beyond.

Sean Alward is an artist and writer who lives in Vancouver.

© Sean Alward 2015