Painted with urgency and joy

October 14, 2008

Regina Haggo
The Hamilton Spectator
(Oct 14, 2008)

A stone rose on the ceiling of a medieval Scottish chapel took root in the imagination of Fiona Kinsella.

The carved flower grew, multiplied and blossomed, becoming the unifying element in Chapel (rose), Kinsella's must-see exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the transit gallery.

The Hamilton artist, who exhibits locally and internationally, is known for her sculptural pieces that look like cakes. But for this exhibition she has introduced something new. For the past year, she has been working on a series of intricate oil paintings.

Kinsella has been inside many European chapels. But her visit to Rosslyn Chapel, a 15th-century church just south of Edinburgh , was significant.

"For some reason it has allowed or, rather, forced me to paint with an unstoppable urgency, fervour and joy for the past year," she says. "Perhaps ultimately, the paint itself has become the true inspiration for this work."

In each squarish painting, Kinsella loads the canvas surface with oil paint, up to five centimetres deep. She whips, twirls and pulls the paint into circular shapes. The highly textured surface looks as though it is covered with slightly abstracted roses.

White dominates some of Kinsella's pieces. She enlivens another group with swirls of red, yellow and purple. Some of the reds glisten like blood.

Roses have traditionally been associated with the Virgin Mary. The flower represents her joy at Christ's birth. Its thorns serve as a reminder of Christ's death on the cross.

In (20 lbs) chapel (rose) (a soundless music), reds, greens, yellows and blues draw attention to a vibrant massing of rose shapes in the top left. This unified cluster contrasts with a looser arrangement of green and red rose shapes in the lower right. These seem to be in the process of disintegrating or coming into being.

Roses play a more minor role in Kinsella's sculptures, which resemble loaf cakes with white icing, each in its own acrylic case.

The cakes are neat and beautiful, like the kind made by good housewives, but they contain a pinch of horror. White sugar roses lie along the base of each cake, but the decoration also features the skull of a bird.

In (cake) dove (white niche) (angel), the skull's eye sockets are filled with rhinestones, juxtaposing the unsettling with the exquisite. Two earrings in the shape of six-petalled flowers lie atop the cake. Bite into these at your peril. Some pieces of hair are stuck on the cake.

What's more, the loaf cake looks like a miniature coffin. The roses and sinuous lines decorating the cake's sides are reminiscent of Victorian gravestone art. The dead bird looks as though it might be emerging from the coffin. Birds are traditional symbols of the soul, which leaves the body at death.

Kinsella's materials list combines the concrete and the esoteric. She says she has used fondant icing, glass, rhinestones, earrings and the hair of a small child in the making of her cakes. But she also adds music, apparition and beads of light.

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Congratulations to William Rueter of Dundas . The printer and maker of books who runs The Aliquando Press won two of six awards at The Art Of The Book '08. The exhibition of books from all over Canada runs until Oct. 26 at Ontario Crafts Council Gallery, 990 Queen St. W. , Toronto .

dhaggo@thespec.com