Philip Surrey, Green Nocturne (detail), 1972, watercolour, conté, acrylic gel and pencil crayon on paper

Philip Surrey, Summer Night, Westmount Park (detail), 1961, watercolour, conté and graphite on paper

In paintings and sketches, nighttime can only be perceived in contrast with sources of light–the shadowy silhouetted outlines of buildings; figures, trees or mountains illuminated by streetlamps; car headlights; or the moon. It is thus that visual artists exploring movement and shapes in the dark encounter the ironic necessity of representing light. Nightlight presents work from the Firestone Collection of Canadian Art that explores this tension of opposites. From Pat O’Hara’s illuminated streetlamp in Vancouver’s Gas Town to Maurice Cullen’s scene of Venice disappearing into dusk, the work in this exhibition considers the paradoxical co-dependence of light and dark, which has long inspired art, philosophy, literature, poetry and mythology.

There is a human tendency to be simultaneously afraid and intrigued by the dark, viewing the encroaching shadows of dusk as both a harbinger of danger and potential amusement. Canadian artist Philip Surrey captured this particular duality in his quasi-surrealist paintings and illustrations of urban dwellers in Montreal. His images of people playing sports, walking park paths, listening to music, or uneasily passing each other on sidewalks are heightened by the addition of park lamps, illuminated headlights, and glowing neon signs, which cast eerie hues and elongate the shadows.

The darkness of evening accumulating over a landscape may be viewed as a metaphor for sleep descending peacefully upon the natural world, but it also creates a certain level of uneasiness. Artist Kazuo Nakamura used a dark watercolour palette around a clear white horizon to depict the transformation of day into night, while Sherrard Grauer gave the landscape a sense of disquiet and foreboding in her work Weatherscape (1974). Other artists, such as John Koerner, Henri Masson and Claude Picher, focus instead on the changing aspect of the sky: the bounce of light and play of colour over the sea; the reflective properties of a blue moon; or a grove of silhouetted trees disappearing almost completely into the night.

– Catherine Sinclair, Exhibition Curator

Events

Opening
Thursday 26 November at 5:30 pm

Exhibition tour with curator Catherine Sinclair (in English)
Friday 11 December at 12:30 pm

Contemporary Context with artist Andrew Wright (in English)
Friday 15 January at 12:30 pm