The common weeds and plants of Southern Ontario are the muses of Owen Sound-based painter, Lorne Wagman.

The oil paintings and watercolors of this show vibrate with an inner life that is infectious, celebrating life directly. A more realistic plein air watercolor initiates the process of many of the works that are then taken back to his studio and developed into a large scale painting, often incorporating abstract elements. The work is filled with intense color, movement and direct references to the elements; wind (undulating trees), sun (luminous and mystical lights wich surround the plants), earth (foregrounds that glorify the minutiae) and water (racing clouds that threaten rain).

These works act as a tonic against the chaos of our post modern technological world. Two of his favorite subjects were well represented in this show: the dandylion and the burdock. Both of these plants he painted for over a generation. Well known in the complimentary health system as de-toxifiers of the human body, these plants act as prophetic warnings against the overloading of nature with chemicals and it’s wholesale destruction by mankind. Past subtle warning, these plants in Wagman’s work act with gentle and beckoning gestures to the viewer, enticing one to respect and nurture nature, to maintain the harmonies of ages past, but without sentimentality or nostalgia. Indeed, politics and polemics are not his style.

Wagman is a supreme genius of the microcosm and the macrocosm and one of Canada’s greatest landscape painters. His personal humility is an anomoly in today’s competitive art world.

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