Canadian Artist Anne-Marie Cosgrove Questions Limits of Narrative

Anne-Marie Cosgrove, Superman 2010, acrylic on board, 24 x 30 x 2 in.Canadian Artist. Image courtesy of the artist

ARTIST/PAINTER

BY KAZAD

Artcentron celebrates Canadian artist Anne-Marie Cosgrove for her devotion to creative excellence and quest for new forms of visual language.

MONTREAL, CANADA– For most communicators, language is the best form of communication. From visual to written and spoken, language is the absolute way to express thoughts and ideas. Within that absolute, however, is the in-absolute of language because it is not in all instances that language helps to adequately articulate narratives. The inadequacy of language to sufficiently communicate certain view and narratives have led to the search for new forms of language to augment existing ones. One of those who has been striving to show the limitations of language as well as expand its oeuvre is Canadian artist Anne-Marie Cosgrove.

The quest for new forms of artistic language has for years propelled Cosgrove to search for new and effective ways to express her artistic thoughts and ideas. In March 2013, she had a major solo exhibition at the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts in Toronto, Ontario. Titled Anne-Marie Cosgrove: Cover Series, the show grouped together existing and new works by the artist completed since 2009 as part of an evolving body of work that explored and questioned limits of narrative, visual language, and identity.

Cover Series was well received by art lovers and communication enthusiasts when it opened in Ontario. The attraction was not just aesthetics but also the fact that the artist stressed the importance of expanding the visual language vocabulary.  Describing her artistic and creative process, Anne-Marie Cosgrove notes the importance of language:

My work begins with language; that is, what must be used to facilitate knowledge and understanding, and at the same time, the seeming impossibility of any language to construct reality for the other, precisely the impossibility of knowing that reality except through difference. My work also begins with painting, the poetic and the lyrical reaffirmed by the gesture and the line. It is the element of non-conformity, a result of the physicality of painting and the politics of my existence, that reminds me of the fallibility of the intention of the artist and of the human experience. In the end, all these shape the outcome of the work.

In June 2014, Cosgrove continued with her search for a new visual language that would effectively express those unattainable narratives, thoughts, and visual statements that she sought to express. In an exhibition titled Continuation at the Red Head Gallery, Cosgrove persisted in her pursuit of an expansive visual language that would better articulate her visual ideas and artistic statements. In a new series of paintings on two canvas panels, she explored the duality of the physical painting space and the repetition of size. Composed of underpainting and superimpositions of lines executed, at times, by swift gestures of the brush and slow, conscious and deliberate structures of mark-making, Cosgrove’s process of creation was performative and expressive.

Continuation brought to the fore Cosgrove’s insatiable desire for new visual language vocabulary and ways of presenting narratives that are inherent yet extends beyond the surface of the painting. This approach to painting, Anne-Marie notes,   “began with earlier text-based paintings that avoid suggestions of composition and situate the paintings as fragments of a larger space, a formal repetition of elements and lack of any perspectival space are used to convey the painted space beyond the limits of the frame. This all-over approach to the structures in the works are characteristic to these paintings.”

Artcentron celebrates Canadian artist  Anne-Marie Cosgrove for her devotion to creative excellence and continued quest to develop new forms of visual language to help enhance her artistic statements. There is great expectation for her next exhibition in 2015.

Artist Biography

Born in Montréal, Québec, Anne-Marie Cosgrove is an award-winning painter and one of the most versatile Canadian artists to have made a great impact on the international art stage. She has a Master of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montréal. Her artworks have been shown in exhibitions in Canada, the US, and elsewhere in cities such as Montréal, Toronto, New York City, Miami, Seattle, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C. Some of her awards include the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Her work has been reviewed in Canada and the US in publications such as Vanguard Magazine; Matriart: A Canadian Feminist Art Journal, ArtWord: Artists Forum, and numerous online publications.

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