{"id":20685,"date":"2013-02-06T14:33:21","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T19:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=20685"},"modified":"2013-02-06T14:33:21","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T19:33:21","slug":"art-exhibit-for-both-the-eye-and-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2013\/02\/art-exhibit-for-both-the-eye-and-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Art exhibit for both the eye and the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Haitian-born<\/a>

Haitian-born artist Jean-Salomon Andre has an exhibit of his paintings on display until Friday in the Sean O'Sullivan Theatre.<\/p><\/div>\n

At first glance, the colourful paintings hanging in the lobby of the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre appear to be the work of two very different artists.<\/p>\n

Bold, geometric abstract canvases hang amongst depictions of impressionist-like tropical landscapes. But both are the creations of Jean-Salomon Andr\u00e9, a<\/p>\n

Haitian-born artist whose solo painting exhibit is visiting Brock this week as part of African Heritage Month celebrations.<\/a><\/p>\n

The son of a farmer, Andr\u00e9 grew up in Dessalines, a town about two hours north of Port-au-Prince,<\/a> where he found a muse in his natural surroundings.<\/p>\n

“I paint many landscapes because I’m from a region where landscapes are beautiful,” said Andr\u00e9, who now calls Brampton home.<\/p>\n

As for his more abstract work, that came out of necessity. Andr\u00e9 studied at the Beaux-Arts Academy in Port-au-Prince before eventually coming to Canada to earn his bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the Universit\u00e9 du Quebec a Montreal. During that time, he studied modern art, photography and something more applied – graphic design – drawing out the more abstract artist within.<\/p>\n

Still, ask him how he prefers to paint and Andr\u00e9 isn’t about to pick favourites.<\/p>\n

“Your style is like your children. You don’t have a preference,” he said. “I use a style for each situation.”<\/p>\n

Take the abstract painting, filled with bright colours, right angles and perfect circles, that’s showing publicly for the first time with this exhibit. Called Shockwaves, the painting is a tribute to Andr\u00e9’s homeland and the 2010 earthquake<\/a> that reduced Port-au-Prince to rubble, killing more than 220,000 people and leaving one million homeless.<\/p>\n

Everything about Shockwaves is deliberate, from the work’s modern style right down to Andr\u00e9’s choice of a coarse canvas on which it was painted.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have the lines or form to draw the disaster,” Andr\u00e9 said about choosing not do a more a realistic portrayal of the earthquake’s aftermath. “The suggestion is more important than the reality. Sometimes I paint for the eye, sometimes I paint for the brain.”<\/p>\n

His choice of colours, however, are made to reflect who he is, he explained.<\/p>\n

“I use bright colour because I have colour in my eyes and colour in my blood,” Andr\u00e9 said. “I am a coloured man and a man of colour.”<\/p>\n

The other painting he hopes visitors will pay close attention to when viewing the exhibit is a massive canvas showing an asotor, a large African drum Andr\u00e9 said is used for communication.<\/p>\n

The painting took two months, brush in hand eight hours a day, to complete.<\/p>\n

“Black history begins with the Asotor,” Andr\u00e9 said. “With the drum, you can communicate what you feel, what you want, what you need, everything.”<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9’s exhibit runs until Friday before opening at the Beaux-Arts Brampton gallery <\/a>for an exhibit from Feb. 12 to 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first glance, the colourful paintings hanging in the lobby of the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre appear to be the work of two very different artists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":20686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[777,793,111],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20685"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20700,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20685\/revisions\/20700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}