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Shannon
Hutchinson's most recent body of
work is more about her use of colour in the landscape than
perspective, a theme her work is usually firmly planted in with
her exploration of the transience of time and space in flight.
"Even in my more traditional landscape pieces, emphasis remains
on the sky. As a child, I had
many hours to sit and think as I watched my dad (a pilot)
flying. It was then that I started questioning where I was, the
meaning of time spent in flight, and why time in the air did not
always translate to time on the ground. I was no more than five
as I looked out of the window in the cockpit as the abyss moved
closer and further away from where I sat -- that's what my art
is, and has always been about." Shannon is now also a pilot
herself and is always quoted as saying that "one cannot exist
without the other" when speaking of her art and her flying.
Though
the vastness of her seascapes is still evident in this new work
her use of colour seems to have become more important than the
translation of infinite space as there are far smaller works
than we are used to seeing from this artist whose work often
filled the peripheral vision of the viewer. Now, her work is
more focused on producing an impression of Caribbean beaches and
coastlines with layers of colour.
Hutchinson
is a Graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design in
Toronto. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and
produced her thesis work in their off-campus program in Florence
Italy, an honor reserved for their top students.
Her work was so well liked by the locals in
Florence that she was offered exhibition space almost
immediately and chose Cole Beretto, a meeting place for local
artists, as the temporary home for her Thesis collection that
she would later bring home to Trinidad. Shannon has had many
milestones in her life for such a young artist, conducting
lectures at the Galleria del'Academia (home of Michelangelo's
"David") and the Uffizi Gallery (housing the largest collection
of the most important Renaissance artworks that have shaped the
art world as we know it today).
Shannon found herself
interested in the geometry of the golden section used as a
foundation in Renaissance works (now forever present in her
collections since 2006), as well as the alchemy of making paint
in the 14th and 15th century. She
learned and integrated traditional techniques in painting used
by the old masters and started making her own oil paint from
natural pigments, marble and precious metals. "My
process has become more important to me than the work itself.
The alchemy in making my own paint I find most interesting
because I never know how certain metals will oxidize when mixed
with certain media or different pigments. I watch as the glazes
I've made transcend the nature of their individual parts.”
Hutchinson
is the two-time winner of the National Millennium Excellence
Award in Canada for innovation and academic achievement.
In
the last ten years she has been in well over forty art
exhibitions in Trinidad, Italy, and Canada. Her work belongs to
a number of well known commercial and private collections in
Canada, the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.
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