benchwarmer, 2017, oil on canvas

Prince Edward Island artist Norma Jean MacLean, known as a painter, has recently expanded her practice to include
installations and sculpture. The relationship between human and natural landscapes has been a key source for MacLean’s imagery, which initially focused on rural, often wintry scenes; MacLean was attracted to the “accidental” abstraction she saw, where fields of snow obscured and were shaped by makeshift buildings and other structures.

This discovery led to her current practice, which places painterly, expressive concerns—control, gesture, composition, material and optical effects—in dialogue with more impersonal and passive systems of image making, such as experiments with reflection, chance, and natural accumulation.

rebound court, 2016, oil on panel

The exhibition is curated by Pan Wendt and supported by a grant from RBC Foundation.