Bad luck has always fascinated Calgary based artist Stacey Watson, so she made it the subject of her new exhibition, “Fortuna” showing at the Trianon Gallery (104-5 Street South) until Nov. 20.
Her displays, which include an disabled oil well shooting streamers of oil, a wishing well and a mountain with dead mountain climbers at the foot of it along with some dark and disturbing oil paintings, were created in the unusual medium of paper maché. They are a departure from her usual medium of photography. She taught photography at the University of Lethbridge during the summer.
“I just wanted to make fun of the idea of bad luck, fortune and fate,” she said adding the humour is in the use of her materials.
“The mountain climbers have funny gloves on and they look like Halloween dummies,” she said adding her paintings were done with the idea of manipulating the paint as little as possible in order to create art which can be interpreted as to the audience‘s whims. Some of the subjects include a surreal waterfall, drowning sailors and what looks like people holding torches in a dark cave.