A spontaneous homage to graceful and glorious horses graces the entrance of the Foyer Gallery at the Public Library from April 7 to May 4.
The visuals include large pastels portraying a dynamic, graphic thoroughbred horse race and a soft and melancholy horse and groom. But it's not just the artistic creation of domestic animals with shiny coats - realist Stanley Mishkin expands his imagery to urban sky and yardscapes, accounts of reality, studies of life and portraits.
Mishkin's realist interpretive painting of the theatre represents more than the demolition of the Fairlawn Cinema in Toronto. He has merged the image of chaotic shapes, patterns and textures with his delicate and precise style to create a multi-depth composition of subtleties and nuances.
"If I am sensitive to line, mass, value and colour harmonies I can avoid a sterile picture," he said. "Often a sketch can be more rewarding for both the artist and the viewer as it has an economy of strokes and retains a spontaneity that allows for more space in interpretation. Ultimately it is my challenge to incorporate this feeling into a fully-realized composition."
Mishkin has been creating art since the mid 1980s, starting with mainly photography, sketching and collage. He began painting in 2000 and recently became more developed and productive, evolving, through series, to a less illustrative and more painterly, realist format.
Mishkin said he tries to live well and would love to work full-time as an artist, if it would only pay the rent. And inspirations?
"At the moment it is the urban environment, another time it'll be something else."
He added there are many artists he finds inspiring apart from his all time gods: Ruebens, Rembrandt and Velasquez.
He points to JMW Turner - an impressionist painter living 100 years before impressionism was coined. Mishkin said he also finds revelation in an extensive list of realist expressionist painters including such masters as Whistler, Sargent, Toulouse Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Hopper and Stanley Spencer.
For more information visit: www.stanleymishkin.myartchannel.com.
