This is the first public gallery exhibition to focus on Tony Scherman's drawings and to examine the relationship between his drawing and painting. The two disciplines cohabit Scherman's practice in both independent and co-dependent ways. Drawings are his way of thinking, done from life, photographs and film stills. The studio is Scherman's laboratory, and while ideas may be incorporated into the paintings, the drawings are kept separate even if they edge toward painting - hence the complexities of his codes. Some works may only emerge to Scherman's satisfaction after a year or two. He said that he will "do anything in the drawing to achieve a result." They are often done on the cheapest of papers and using encaustic (wax melted with pigments) as his preferred medium: recently, he has worked on photographic inkjet enlargements.  pensées impensables (unthinkable thoughts) has been devised as an installation and a metaphor based on two portrait paintings and a group of unframed works on paper. The portraits were done for different reasons but have affinities. One is of Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the 1981 television film The Bunker. The other portrait is from Scherman's Chasing Napoleon cycle of paintings. The exhibition title is derived from an earlier Napoleon painting with the phrase “les pensées impensables” written along the bottom. Scherman's interest in painting the demons and heroes of history is the possibility of demythologizing them, but the works also invites interpretation, hence unthinkable thoughts. As he stated, "it is not history, so I can lie in order to reveal a truth." Scherman also noted that "the drawings are an impulse to articulate things I see." The familiar subjects are those of flowers, food, animals, child and other face studies, and body fragment studies. The exhibition subjects also include an unlikely cast of characters: Oedipus, (actor) Gillian Anderson, Odin (in the guise of Scherman's Scottish Terrier, Hugo), modernist architect Mies Van der Rohe, 18th century French philosopher Voltaire, and Daffy Duck.  Ihor Holubizky Guest Curator The Kelowna Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges The Daily Courier for sponsoring this exhibition, and the Okanagan Cultural Corridor and the City of Kelowna Cultural District through Department of Canadian Heritage Cultural Capitals of Canada for funding and support.

Exhitbition images