Hiatus: M.E. Sparks
Hiatus / when stiffened vowels touch / voice falling and rising and closing and opening / cracking / pause / split slit slot / yawn / fingers parting / minding the gap / thigh gap and pay gap / gap-toothed / mouth and tongue and cheek / forming sounds in empty space
M.E. Sparks is an artist living in Vancouver, BC on unceded Coast Salish territories. Working primarily through painting, her work culls from Western art history, found objects and childhood narrative. Recent paintings approach ideas of obfuscation and tenebrosity, historical representations of the female body, and false binaries of abstraction and representation. For this exhibition, Sparks explores the possibilities of cut and un-stretched canvas, calling attention to the malleability, flaccidity and contradictory flatness of the painted image.
Sparks holds an MFA from Emily Carr University and BFA from NSCAD University. Recent shows include Pleated Fingers Parted, Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, Victoria (2019), some body anybody, South Main Gallery, Vancouver, (2019), Inside Out, SiteFactory, Vancouver (2018),Mother Tongue, Dynamo Arts Association, Vancouver (2018), near channels, Support, London ON (2018), and A Terrible Signal, Access Gallery, Vancouver (2017). Sparks was a finalist in the 2016 and 2017 RBC Painting Competitions. She has participated in residencies in Canada, Germany and Finland, and will be attending the Vermont Studio Center in 2020.
