Born in Quesnel, British Columbia, Crissy Arseneau is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She has been featured by the CBC Arts Newsletter, The Jealous Curator, the Georgia Straight and Kolaj Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and art spaces in British Columbia, including the Vancouver Airport, with pieces held in private collections in Canada, the US, and the UK.
Select pieces are available for purchase by contacting the artist directly, as well as through Art Interiors Gallery in Toronto, Ontario.
Statement
My practice explores attention and contemplation, time and place, and our relationship to the natural and built environments.
Material choice and my own bent toward problem-solving, applying order, and striving for precision lead the process. Washes of transparent watercolour provide radiant colour and organic visual texture. Exactness is introduced when the painted paper is precisely cut, arranged, and bonded into crisp polychromatic bands and geometric pieces. Colour combinations draw from nature and nostalgia, and by how colours sit next to each other and change our state when we look at them - harmonious or more electric, complementary or clashing.
In my current work, the quality of our attention is a strong theme. I aim to create the illusion of movement and volume through playing with perspective, combining isometric shapes, colour interaction, and a variety of tone and visual texture. The appearance of dimension is amplified when these irregularly shaped, low-relief figures are presented floating within their frame, enhancing their actual volume and producing shadow. All these elements lend to engaging with the finished work a little longer and more deeply, the eye traveling along the lines, finding and losing the edges, moving in and out of reality and perception.