‘Blue is the typical heavenly colour,’ Kandinsky wrote. ‘The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker a thunderous bass; and the darkest blue of all – an organ.’
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Wassily Kandinsky. Composition VII. 1913

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Blue is a colour many associate with Vancouver. It is also the subject of A Deeper Shade of Blue, a gorgeous exhibit at Vancouver’s Bau-Xi Gallery. “The exhibition was curated by the Director of Bau-Xi Vancouver, Riko Nakasone,” Bau-Xi tells us, “and was a challenge posed to our roster of gallery artists to consider their palette and to engage with the art historical contexts, cultural associations and emotional qualities of the colour blue.”

Many of the gallery’s diverse range of artists created works specially for the exhibit. Here are a few of the pieces you will see:

Anthony Redpath. Kits Pool

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Joseph Plaskett. Still Life With Black Pots (On Blue)

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Darlene Cole. Kissing Trees (White Gloves)

“It’s the subtleties of blue that entrance me,” says Cole. “The evocative, inky blues of velvet, the delicate, thin veils of the sky, or the layered ruffles of a rumbling lake. I’ve always been drawn to water (my studio is on a lake) and the intricacies of blue are cool and contemplative to me.’

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Michael Wolf. Tokyo Compression

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Katrin Korfmann. Blauwe Bloem

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Poetics. Vicky Smith

“Blue is the colour of infinity. Of cloudless skies and deep calm seas. It has no dimensions. Blue is the space between breaths.” 

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Sylvia Tait. Rhapsody in Blue.

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Mel Gausden. Trashy Novels

“Recently, the colour blue has represented to me the deepest part of the lake and the things moving below the surface that you can’t see.”

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Barbara Cole. Frankly Blue, From Chromatics

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Jamie Evrard.

“L’Heure Bleue – the twenty minutes or so before the sun comes up or after it goes down – is one of my favourite times of day.  The beauty of the indirect light during those brief periods is as mysterious and evocative as the colour blue itself and can make the ordinary appear extraordinary.”

A Deeper Shade of Blue, held over until July 28th, is definitely worth the no-charge visit to South Granville.

Blue @ Bau-Xi

Written by Elizabeth Newton
www.creatorsvancouver.com

Header: Michelle Nguyen. Ghostland