The figures are immediately recognizable as people who are sleeping under rough conditions. Each is an individual: alone, or accompanied by a companion dog. Other paintings show pairs of dogs, engaged with each other or the viewer, ambiguously in either fight or play. Bared teeth suggest aggression or conflict.
The figures are painted with great intimacy, using oil paint and precious-metal leaf on wood panels, materials reserved historically for prestigious or sacred subject matter. The materials and style of painting are chosen for their capacity to attract the eye of the viewer and to draw in the viewer to engage with the works in an intimate way.
The title of the collection is declarative of the positive: “this IS home,” as opposed to the more normative construction of “homelessness,” which essentially identifies a population and the individuals within it by their lack. I hope to draw the viewer to make certain associations: that each of us are precious, whether we live in a sleeping bag, a box, or a mansion. That any one of us might be one or two bad choices or calamities from losing our safe housing. It is also a reminder that the most holy people often chose to live in dire poverty. Finally it is a critique of a society that tolerates such a dire inequity of resources.
Everyone is Someone / November 19, 2017
Everybody is Someone is currently showing at the Patrick Gordon Gallery on Elm Street …. The recent works by Ottawa painter Diane Hiscox are both beautiful and paradoxical; immediately creating tensions and questions for the viewers.
The exhibit consists of many small oil and gold leaf paintings on board exhibited without framing on small screw that lift the works away from the wall surface and toward the viewer. The subject of each wood panel is a specific homeless person, who Hiscox has meticulously painted in colour with particular detail and attention to the folds in the sleeping bags or blankets, in which each subject is wrapped. In some works, the figure is enveloped in the bag and no face or flesh is depicted. In others, a dog is with the person in or near the bag. The background of each work is gold leaf, some with an overalldesign, others with transitions to silver or bronze. The overall impression is one of Byzantine Christian icons, with differences and similarities. Traditional icons left little room for artistic expression and followed a strict set of conventions. Hiscox’s works do not have the verticality or portraiture scheme of icons that feature one central figure (Jesus, Virgin Mary, saints or angels).
Rather, the central subject/object of Hiscox’s paintings suggest the 14th century painting subjects of the Lamentations of Christ, or Taking Christ from the Cross paintings, as Hiscox’s figures or sleeping bags with hidden figures are often diagonal or horizontal and swaddles in drapery painted with the static mannerism and colours of a Giotto painting. Lamentations paintings are works of great sorrow whereas the icons are works of glory and majesty emanating the presence and majesty of Christ. The dogs, seem to be silent witnesses, and constant companions, are symbolic of loyalty (fidelity). These paintings embody the traditions of Judeo-Christian teachings of what we can learn from the poorest of the poor, while the static painting style to the 13th- and 14th- century temper emotions.
The question for the viewer is, are we to feel the compassion and sorrow toward the poor and displaced as toward a crucifixion and sacrifice, or do we honour and respect them as the image of God?
Review by Dawna Moore, MFA