Doodle Dandies | Sascha Hastings
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/doodle.html
“Last fall, I wandered into Weird Woods, a show by artist Seth Scriver at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects on Toronto’s trendy Queen West gallery strip. After half an hour of looking at Scriver’s quirky little drawings of bushmen and furry blob creatures, I left with a nagging thought: is this the spawn of the Royal Art Lodge? Now don’t get me wrong – I love the Royal Art Lodge, Canada’s most successful artist collective since General Idea, the Regina Five and, long before them, the Group of Seven. […] Baerwald and Enright feel that a lot of it started back in the early 1980s with American artist Raymond Pettibon, who adopted a comic-book style of art, combining drawings and text that referred equally to pop culture and ‘high’ culture, philosophy and politics. But Pettibon was something of a voice in the wilderness amongst a generation of artists who preferred photography, slick video and vivid Neo-Expressionist paintings. According to Baerwald, it was a new, younger generation of artists who, in an attempt to define themselves in contrast to their elders, revived the somewhat forgotten art of drawing. Mulherin notes that at recent art fairs, she’s seen more and more works on paper, especially by emerging artists showing with younger galleries. She says that Toronto artist Shari Boyle was reluctant to display her drawings for a while precisely because she felt there was too much drawing around.”

Surface Tension | Alec Scott
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/lemieux.html
“Lemieux’s popularity is easy to explain – at least on one level. He painted pretty pictures, ones that aren’t technically difficult to read and feel. He imbues all his pieces, particularly his winterscapes, with a magical luminosity. His subjects are generally accessible: families (remembered from his childhood) wearing their Edwardian Sunday best; unspoiled agricultural landscapes; and nighttime skies hinting (but not too broadly) at the infinite. Even during the post-Pollock 1960s and ’70s, Lemieux remained resolutely on the figurative side of the great figurative-abstract divide – unlike, say, his great friend Paul Emile Borduas. Formally, Lemieux’s compositions are as well balanced as the shots of a skilled amateur photographer. But there’s more to him: if a first glance at his work reveals an orderly prettiness, take two uncovers dark currents swirling under the apparently calm surfaces.”