painting – curated.

Joseba Sánchez Zabaleta | Room With Mirror

September 8, 2023

Joseba Sánchez Zabaleta | Room With Mirror

“It is said that scattered through Despair’s domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart.

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In her world, there are so many windows. Each opening shows her an existence that’s fallen to her — some only for moments, some for lifetimes.”
(Neil Gaiman, from Season of Mists and Brief Lives, respectively)

Part of a larger series that engages with ‘footprints and memory’ and places now empty where the artist has recorded – or interpreted – the detritus of those who once existed in these spaces, Zabaleta’s paintings seem haunted. Though empty of people, their presences still suffuse the space, with an implication of absence, with someone missing that still is intrinsic to the atmosphere of his compositions.

His words : I wanted to paint the uninhabited buildings that I found in search of the memory of all those lives that I sensed should remain intact and detained in them. Waiting for something to happen, the empty buildings keep within their walls the trace of what has been lived between them. Somehow the fled love is imprinted on the plaster of its partitions. The silence of those deaf rooms falls through the walls, depositing itself between the joints in the pavement, next to the arid and dusty trace of time, among accumulated fragments, piled up by the wind in the corners.

One of the images I’ve shared in the full post is titled Marlom. Zabaleta offers the following meditation about this site, this painting, and the unknown person :

Of you there is only a name written in blue blood.

You thought it would be easy, that it would be just as they had told you. You thought that if others had achieved it, you would also achieve it. You thought while you were hiding, while the world was chasing you, what would be the best way not to be seen, to disappear, and you didn’t realize that nobody saw you, that you could have gone out on the road and walked, because those who are like you around here and you don’t look at them nor do you see them.

More of Joseba Sánchez Zabaleta’s fine paintings can be seen here.

~ Bart Gazzola

Catherine Mellinger | Whips

March 17, 2023

Catherine Mellinger | Whips

Originally from Saskatoon, mixed media collage artist Catherine Mellinger is a valued contributor to the Kitchener-Waterloo Region art scene. A graduate of the CREATE Institute in Toronto, Mellinger states that her work has always centered on her “own personal experience of being a human being.” While stating that she was originally shy and would not “blatantly state things” when it came to her work, Mellinger’s work developed after having children. As her life “exploded and imploded at the same time”, Mellinger explains how her art evolved as she “realized and connected to other feminist artists, other contemporary artists who were not having to hide. They were talking about trauma, mental illness and their personal lives as inspiration.” Today, Mellinger works with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and other community organizations and initiatives.

To read more click here.

The Sketchbooks of Tom Forrestall

October 13, 2022

curated.’s Virgil Hammock offers some thoughts on the voluminous and impressive notebooks of Canadian artist Tom Forrestall in tandem with an exhibition titled The Sketchbooks of Tom Forrestall at The Saint Johns Art Centre.

Take The Long Way Home | Jon Claytor

July 25, 2022

High culture has pretty much disappeared along with the dress code.

Different Water

June 22, 2022

Different Water A Discussion on Art featuring work by Chrystal Gray and Mayra Perez Whiskey Bottle by Mayra Perez, Mask and... Read More

The Chain Links

June 20, 2022

Faki Kuano | Sarah Cheon | Ashley Guenette The Chain Links × × curated. by The COVERT Collective is pleased to... Read More

Tony Calzetta – Art Is Hell

April 22, 2022

Tony Calzetta Art Is Hell Bart Gazzola sat down to talk with Tony Calzetta, whose decades long practice has been both... Read More

Ana Žanić – One Breath – Femme Folks Fest Repost

March 15, 2022

The first time you see Ana Žanić’s watercolor and pencil artwork is like taking a sharp blow to the limbic system. Every one of your senses screams “I know this” but cannot figure out what “this” is or why it knows it. They take on the form of something both organic and subliminal, communicating to us of the past (back to pre-history) and our deeply troubled emotional state we find ourselves in through the pandemic.

Her colour palettes are very natural and gently reassuring… mother earth will take us back into her bosom and help us heal. The meticulous marks speak of long journeys past, and reach out to our future selves to remind us that we have struggled before and have overcome those obstacles… we can do it again.

I reached out to Ana and asked her a few questions.