Brush with Opulence: Perspectives
By Jola Liebzeit. On display in our Main Gallery, March 15 to April 22, 2021.
Artist Statement – Brush with Opulence – Perspectives
This art exhibition is a follow-up to my first solo art exhibition in Winnipeg titled, “Brush with Opulence.” This first show was a personal journey. After sufferings several significant losses in my life, I was searching for a way to figure out who I was as a person and as an artist. After showing my work in many group exhibitions, I embarked on showing my art as a solo artist for the first time. I chose Joseph Campbell’s writings as my mentor, guiding me through a new and unknown experience. May this show inspire you on your personal journey into your unknown.
“Brush with Opulence – Perspectives” is a collection of work that depicts psychologist Joseph Campbell’s 12 main hero’s journey stages using imaginative landscapes and non-objective abstract paintings. Campbell’s stages are a common story structure with similar patterns that are engrained in cultures worldwide. There is always a protagonist who goes on an adventure, retrieves something they need, encounters conflict and adversity, before returning home, transformed.
The journey starts with The Ordinary World which I depicted in 3 panels by using a soft pastel color palette and a lone black and white panel that represents the hero alone. Opening the story there is a crisis, A Call to Adventure, represented by non-objective geometric shapes that show the hero’s world being shaken up. The Refusal of the Call I symbolize by rocks and many moons portraying the hero having blocks that holds them back. It turns out guides, in the Meeting the Mentor stage, which I represented by figures in nature, help the hero work through frustrations. Here the hero is guided by flying nature elements as invitations into the unknown, ‘Special World’, that I convey through abstract wood like lines.
The second phase has the hero Crossing the Threshold into the unknown and experiencing Tests, meeting friends, and discovering enemies. I reveal 5 panels each with different symbolic environments. From a sunrise in a forest, to an imaginative encounter with “Now Versus Future,” to an inner abstract representation of playfulness, to a bridge into more unknown, and a path with many branches, the hero must make decisions each step of the way. As the hero Approaches the Innermost Cave a confrontation with being stuck occurs and I ally with words to fill the canvas as foundation for these pieces. In the Facing the Ordeal stage, 4 panels explore intuitive composition with dripping and splattering paint as the biggest ordeal, working with unpredictable processes.
Resurrection marks a return of soft pastels and inner world scape with abstract shapes. The hero’s Return is depicted with pieces that are different from the rest of the show, as they are smaller and represent various paint experiments while portraying a return to the ordinary world, forever changed.
Bio: Jola Liebzeit attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and Advanced Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology both from the University of Manitoba. She is self-employed as an artist. The motivational aspect of art to change a space by inspiring its viewer is the focus of her studio practice.
Jola has taken additional professional development training through Creative Manitoba and Cre8ery. Her work has been shown in galleries as a solo artist and in various group exhibitions throughout Manitoba.