Janine Miedzik Born 1967, Toronto. Canada. My work distills my urban surroundings and combines with images of my travels to form a collection of impressions gleaned along the way . The paintings focus on the marks of our presence, experimenting with ideas of scale, perspective and shifting horizons. Working out of the tension between chance and purpose, chaos and order, randomness and design, the paintings in the series ÒNew Electric RideÓ, use the language of minimalism and gestural abstraction that results from a process that is both directed and automatic. Broad areas of flatly saturated pigment is applied in layers of latex, oil and acrylic; to build an overlapping figure ground relationship that relies on the interplay of colour and open spaces to convey the anxieties and tensions of urban existence. My practice is informed by the circular activity of daily routines and travel in a constructed environment. I capture imagery in segments as the passenger or ambler. Playing with scale, perspective and colour interactions, I avoid the middle ground and focus on the micro and macro to reframe imagery that is both architectural and organic. If the act of painting turns off the various noises of urban life, so too does scouting out the references for the work. In a game of distraction, while matching up one shape to another--a puddle, a stain in the asphalt, a worn out section of doormat--I can compile groups of patterns. I have fixated on the unintentional exterior wall embellishments created when graffiti is covered up with paint hues that are either just slightly off or have become completely analogous to the wall surface. These embellishments are amusing, because they attempt to cover up and yet they call to attention the space just as much as the tag or image beneath. The thing that is so beautiful about these awkward surfaces is how they speak to our futile attempts to itemize and to lay claim space as our own---the way that we in essence draw and make marks on the world around us, and the visual tensions that result. All or most titles of the new works are taken from music that was in heavy rotation during thier production most notably Captain Beefheart. (Brian Eno, David Byrne and Fred Frith song titles are among them.) My earlier work titles mapped out personal routes, destinations etc. using placenames- towns cities intersections-and I see the song titles as having a similar function. < BACK