Blue Cloud Day | A Stitch in Time

April 2010, Gallery Gachet showcases two diverse yet confluent artists, Larry Williams and Andria Matta Schaal. Williams is the quintessential outsider, creating visionary work stemming from his imagination that relates to his own personal inner sanctuary. On the other end of the spectrum, Schaal defines her art through her political ideology and speaks to the outer world in which we operate. Both artists offer disparate perspectives on internal and external human experiences but both surge with the same complex imagery, intricate penmanship and stunning beauty.

Blue Cloud Day: The Visionary Art of Larry Williams
Larry Williams fits into the strictest definition of Art Brut. Marginalized since childhood by social, financial, and health barriers, he has continually made an ongoing, conscious choice to disengage himself from the world around him. While creating his art, he has never considered the opinion of anyone but himself. Williams is an authentic self-taught artist. Never having been shown in a gallery before, this retrospective of his vast portfolio of visionary work offers a window into his personal reality – that of the outsider looking within, toward the centre of his own being. Williams simply states: “Look up at the sky when it is blue. That is a blue cloud day.”

A Stitch in Time | Andria Matta Schaal
Matta’s work explores the (anti)-ecology of Empire. Empire – the global entity that some call “progress” that continues to expand and extend control into ever wider and wider territory. This empire knows no limits. It seeks no balance. It demands broader pools of victims and further extraction of resources, always with a complete and utter disregard for the healthy relationships between living things. It is this complex relationship between living organism and the global entity of capital that Matta’s work explores. She speaks to issues of the environmental destruction, colonisation, displacement, extinction and occupation because she finds these harsh and heavy realities. Combining these dark themes with the vapid illusions and grandiose ambitions of today’s society make for biting and provocative art. This series of pen and ink drawings from Vancouver’s upcoming artist, Schaal leave you with a chilling degree of uncertainty about the future of civilisation, as we know it.

To see pictures from this exhibition, please visit our Flickr account https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/sets/72157625165885702