Mary Pratt
edited by Mireille Eagan & Sarah Milroy
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Regarded as one of Canada's finest still life realist artists, Mary Pratt's luminescent paintings form the visual focus of Goose Lane Edition's Mary Pratt, a career retrospective that examines every aspect of this unique artist's creative journey. Featuring seventy-four full colour reproductions of Pratt's most renowned works and a complete chronology of her career, including an selected list of her solo and group exhibitions, the book is augmented with a series of essays by five acclaimed art critics, curators and essayists.
In "Look, Here", Mireille Eagan deftly dissects Pratt's craft by examining the relationship between location, subject and technique in her work. Sarah Fillmore's "Vanitas" visits the artist at home, giving a firsthand account of how the simple pleasures found in the family kitchen served as the inspiration for some of Pratt's most revered pieces. "A Woman's Life" by Sarah Milroy is a detailed discovery of how the women in Pratt's past defined her presence, and informed her future. Catharine M. Mastin studies the artist as a young woman in "Base, Place, Location and the Early Paintings", which traces the roots of her creative identity from the streets of Fredericton, New Brunswick to the shores of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. In "Bedevilling the Real", Ray Cronin argues that Pratt's evocative illusions defy characterization and redefine the relationship between realism and representation.
Mary Pratt is published by Goose Lane Editions in conjunction with an exhibition of her art, organized by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
close this panel"The reality comes first, and the symbol comes after. I see these things, and suddenly they become symbolic of life." — Mary Pratt.
Luminescent canvases form the visual focus of Mary Pratt, a career retrospective that examines every aspect of Pratt's unique creative journey. Pratt's paintings — including Eggs in an Egg Crate, Salmon on Saran, Eviscerated Chickens, Cod Fillets on Tin Foil, This is Donna — have achieved iconic status. Capturing what she describes as "the stuff of life," Mary Pratt's work elevates the mundane to the monumental, creating silent moments infused with significance.
This major volume, the first on Mary Pratt's work in almost twenty years, features more than seventy-five reproductions of her most renowned works as well as essays by five of Canada's finest art writers: columnist and art critic Sarah Milroy; Catharine Mastin of the Art Gallery of Windsor; Mireille Eagan and Caroline Stone of The Rooms; and Ray Cronin and Sarah Fillmore of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Together, they create a conversation around Pratt's technique and influences, examining the themes that weave through and around her art: the role of place and personal biography, the passage of time, the very act of looking and, of course, the "stuff of life."
Mary Pratt is designed to accompany a major touring exhibition organized by The Rooms and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
