You can't see the world through someone else's eyes - unless they are artists.
Andrea Fredeen has been slapping and massaging and nudging oil onto canvas so the world can get at least a hint of her world views. Her latest exhibition starts in a matter of days at Studio 2880 and it is quite deliberately called Perspective.
"I get so much inspiration from the landscape of where we live and the people in our community," said Fredeen. "It's called Perspective because people have their own way of seeing things, even when two people are standing beside each other looking at the same thing. This is my view."
It is a qualified view, an interpretive view. She painted many of her latest works inspired initially by collections of photographs she would shoot of various locations or objects, then she would allow her mind's eye to collect the photos and her imagination into an amalgamated mental image she would then paint. Therefore, there is a veil of fiction to even the most literal of scenes.
It is a step further than her last public exhibition. In late 2015, the Two Rivers Gallery featured a collection of her paintings in a show entitled Story Tellers that took carefully constructed oil snapshots of human body parts. The underlying themes was range of motion, kinesiology and kinetic energy based from Fredeen's profession of physiotherapist.
She has allowed her medical credentials to be put on official pause, lately. She is no longer involved in post-secondary studies (she received a rare Bachelor of Fine Arts from UNBC, among other education benchmarks) and she is taking a long break from her day-to-day career. This is to allow her painting to flourish unfettered.
"The artwork is always evolving," she said. "I can spend time on it now. I can focus on the process, and I'm loving the process, so that gives me excitement. I'm really happy to be able to do this and have these opportunities to find beauty in unlikely places. I took the news of Quebec City (the terrorist attack on innocent Muslims at mosque) really hard this morning. These things in the news lately feel just devastating, and so I go looking for bits of beauty and light. It becomes important to find beauty. It's not saving the planet or anything, but it is finding perspective and keeping inspiration in dark times."
More than an emotional outlet, she is not looking for that light as a part of her job. Each day is more applied experience in this new career direction.
"I'm trusting myself more. I'm more confident in how I'm applying the paint. When I look at what I did 10 years ago, these are quite a bit different than what I did then. I think if you work at something consistently over time you can't help but evolve and hopefully improve, and now I have the time to work on that. I'm an artist now. That's my job. I am really enjoying that. I feel like I have a purpose and it is painting."
Her new purpose comes into public view on Feb. 9 at the feature gallery at Studio 2880 (located at 2880 15th Ave.). The opening reception is at 7 p.m., free to the public, and all are welcome to attend. It will then be on display until March 6.
