VISUAL VIEWPOINTS: Leya Evelyn’s thoughtful, entrancing abstracts yield layers of meaning
ELISSA BARNARD ARTS REPORTER | VISUAL VIEWPOINTS Published October 16, 2014 – 5:31pm
It Happens There 5, by Leya Evelyn, is in her exhibit, Impossible Possibilities, at Secord Gallery, Halifax. It’s a tonic for the fast-paced, careless interactions of the world to stand alone in a room with Leya Evelyn’s beautiful, sonorous paintings. These fine abstract paintings exist unto themselves. They don’t need you, but you need them. Evelyn’s exhibit, Impossible Possibilities, at Secord Gallery, 6301 Quinpool Rd., Halifax, to next Friday, is a major show in quantity and quality. These intelligent, deeply worked abstracts in reds, blues, oranges, yellows and snowy white feature Evelyn’s hallmark saturated colours, scrawls, geometric shapes, spinning lines and textures. However, there is more subtlety, more elegance and a dramatic vertical movement that opens up the world. You are drawn to the edges, which are little masterpieces in themselves of colour, collage and shape. You are led to the interiors. You are called upon to stop and listen. A purple base is shattered by a deep cherry-red vertical gash. A snowy Evelyn was born in Washington, D.C., educated at Brown and Yale universities and moved to Nova Scotia in the early 1980s. She has exhibited extensively in Canada, the United States and Europe.
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