I ok. You ok?
Emma Charlton, Laura Cooney, Andrea Gerstmann, Ivanna Ko
December 4, 2007- January 8, 2008
Artist Talk: December 5, 3p | Reception: December 15, 6-8p

Andrea Gerstmann, Abnormal Canvas Growth 1, mixed media on canvas, 2007

I Ok. You Ok? is a group exhibition of paintings, prints and sculpture. Each artist explores a psychological strand in their work, playing with ideas of imagination, emotion, memory, metaphysics, and states of mind. The show is a collaboration of expressive representation that interprets everyday routines, communication (with self or others),
fantastical worlds, and human anatomy. It is an exhibition that maps our consciousness into visual format. I Ok. We invite you into our minds. You Ok?

Andrea Gerstmann
Andrea concentrates on the details: starting with the one real thing about a painting, the fact that it is inescapably a painting. Logically, the only reason something would exist on the canvas was if it were growing there. Andrea‘s work is an ecosystem on canvas. It shows the simplicity and complexity of growth as the artist invents it. Colour, line and shapes appear on the canvas as if it had grown there. The paintings hold a balance of life and decay. Each element has its own goal but somehow they work together creating a stable environment.

Andrea Gerstmann is in her 4th year of the Fine Art program at Queen's University. Her drawing and painting skills were discovered and encouraged since the earliest days of her youth and developed through University where she opened her style and subject-matter to the winds of change through experimentation and instruction. She is also an established caricature artist employed in the summers by Canada’s Wonderland. Though influences have changed her work, the roots of her inspiration continue to lie in a childlike fantasy she associates to nature.


Ivanna Ko, Bathroom Study 2, mixed media on panel, 2007 (left)
Emma Charlton, Untitled, mixed media on canvas, 2007 (right)

Ivanna Ko
“I am afraid of defining. I hate being defined by anyone, anything. In defining the identity of things, we make them static, sending them on the road to the guillotine, now categorized, branded and put in place.” Ivanna’ s artwork is about suggestion and ambiguity; improvisational paintings that form a visual tableau of a personal psychology. The mixed media (acrylic, oil, spray paint, urethane, wallpaper, mylar) paintings become about scattered thoughts, intimate musings, subconscious meditations and unresolved harmonies.

Ivanna Ko is in her fourth year Bachelor of Fine Arts, at Queen's University. Although she is specializing in painting, her abstractions involve a variety of media-spray paint, oil stick, Mylar, and latex paint. Her background as a musician informs her playful attitude with colour and layering textures

Emma’s painting is primarily focused on mental illness and its effects on familial relationships. Chronicling conversations between herself and an individual suffering from a personality disorder, these interactions have fueled the images of distorted portraits over text.

Emma Charlton, in her 4th year of the Fine Art program at Queen's University, is from Ancaster, Ontario. Her studio practice involves painting and printmaking with interests in photography. She hopes to do post graduate work in graphic and textile design.


Laura Cooney, heart, latex and light, 2007

Laura Cooney
Observation of anatomical structures informs the content in Laura’s work. Working with large scale surfaces, Laura takes a portion of human anatomy and manipulates it to create an environment that exists and flourishes outside of the body. Laura is interested in the metaphysical aspect of our existence and how we can understand ourselves as emotional beings. The graphical and sculptural translations created map a personal interpretation of the realm between structure and belief.

Laura Cooney is in her 4th year of the Fine Art program at Queen's University. She is accustomed to working with a variety of mediums but is concentrating in print and sculpture during her final year. Laura plans to spend a year traveling abroad after she completes her degree at Queen’s.