Solo exhibition by Maureen Babb
November 23 to December 5, 2023
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm; evenings by appointment, open later for First Friday, December 1, 11am to 9pm.
Meet the artist times TBA
Maureen Babb is an artist living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She creates art in a wide variety of media and styles including abstract alcohol ink work and illustrations and comics in pen, ink, markers, pencil and pencil crayon, and digital media. She also makes hand-crafted jewellery with stones and wire. Her work has been displayed at Cre8ery and Gallery 1C03. She has done scientific illustration work for the University of Winnipeg Anthropology Department, and has had her scientific illustrations published in the book Uncovering Early Aboriginal History in Southern Manitoba.
Statement: The title of this exhibition is taken from the John Masefield poem Sea Fever. Like Masefield’s poem, this exhibit hopes to convey a sense of longing for time spent on open waters and a deep love and nostalgia for the sea. Pieces in this exhibit have been inspired by the ships of the Age of Sail, which lasted from 16th through the 19th centuries, and the nautical culture that surrounded them. The works of this exhibit are in a variety of media, including ink drawings influenced by nautical woodcuts, especially those of René Quillivic, alcohol ink paintings that pay homage to the navigational techniques used in sailing, pencil crayon pieces that highlight the dangers sailors faced at the edges of the maps, ink illustrations that showcase the complex knotwork sailors relied on, and wire and stone jewellery inspired by the beauty and fluidity of the ocean.
While the artist hails from the prairies, approximately as far away from the sea as one can get, she has treasured the rare opportunities she has had to visit the ocean, and knows what it is to yearn for the water, whether it is the lakes of Manitoba or the wine dark sea of the Aegean. This will be the artist’s second exhibit at Cre8ery.