The RBC Canadian Painting Competition 2005

Helping Canadian professional visual artists paint their own picture of success

Thanks to the participation of the many artists across Canada, the 2005 competition was a resounding success! The quality of the over 1000 entries vividly illustrates the exceptional skill of Canada’s emerging professional artists.

The 15 finalists had their work featured in public exhibitions at Toronto ’s Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Halifax’s Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Ottawa’s Sussex Art Gallery, and Vancouver’s Bau-Xi Gallery. The national winner and two honourable mentions for 2005 were:

National Winner

Etienne Zack, Western Canada

escape from shapes
Acrylic & oil on canvas
58” x 65”
December 2004

Etienne is taking a new approach to painting that brings together an engaging combination of public sculptures, performance art and video language. This series looks at ways to deconstruct and redefine reality. For this particular painting, he creates an ambiguous, almost fictitious reality, by painting an urban landscape solely from memory.

Honourable Mentions

Kristine Moran, Central Canada

Control and Choice
Pen, ink, acrylic, oil and enamel on wood panel
52” x 60”
May 2005

This series probes into the possibilities of future urbanism and the clashing of ideals -- the old and the new. The dark red shapes are symbols of a hedonistic society taking over the city, while the background is of an existing cityscape, in this case New York City. The citizens are confronted with the possibility of a new society and some try to stand back.

Mathew Reichertz, Western Canada

#16 from the series, “ Tiny Town ”
Oil on canvas
48” x 36”
March 2005

Mathew takes his ideas from various sources and collects them in his memory throughout the day. They could be from the Internet, news stories or experiences during his day. He thinks about them, feels the emotions and then begins to paint. Each painting may combine three or four of these memories. Mathew likes to paint quickly, first blocking in forms and then making efficient brush strokes side by side without layering. This particular painting is part of a series entitled “Tiny Town”.

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Painting image in the web banner is courtesy of Ben Reeves. 2001 Winner