Evan Kelemen
Stavely, Alberta
2013 — Image Transfer/Mixed Media on Canvas, 18 x 24 : $450.00
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Prairie Cathedral #2
2012 — Acrylic on Found Wood, 18 by 18 : $500.00
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Evan Kelemen was born in Calgary Alberta and spent the first two decades of his life in and around Southern Alberta. He moved to Toronto in the late 1990's in order to work as a Scenic Painter in the Film and Television industry. A mainly self-taught painter and visual artist, he has most recently been working in acrylics, watercolour and mixed media. For his Grain Elevator series Kelemen utilized both acrylic and digital mixed media painting techniques. The fast drying times and fluidity of both acrylic and digital iPad paintings transfered onto canvas, offered the perfect techniques for this series. The main theme running through these works is one of vanishing structures on the rural Canadian landscape. The artist was primarily working with the idea that Grain Elevators were/are not merely storage units, rather they embody a particular mental and spiritual place in the heart of rural western Canadian towns and hamlets. These paintings reflect the singular beauty and history of small town Alberta existence and are a link to an endangered way of life. Grain Elevators transcend mere utility to become 'Prairie-Cathedrals', with their buttress like angles and tall stark imposing shadows across the always adjacent train tracks. They remind us of what we lose in the rush to erase our past. Evan Kelemen's work has recently been shown at galleries such as White Wall North, #HashTag gallery, Spazio Dell' Arte, Creative Blueprint gallery, GAS gallery and at restaurants such as Hanks and Bouchon Cafe.