HUMBLE FOLK:

Exhibition Description

In this exhibition, the paintings of Barbara Clark-Fleming and Lucy Ogletree speculate on the style and content of contemporary folk art, otherwise known as vernacular art. Vernacular art is often referred to as “outsider art,” “naive art,” or “untrained art,” though these labels fail to describe an approach to art making that is imbued with innovation and experimentation. As cultural institutions in Canada address how they sanction certain artists and artworks over others, the work of those who lack visibility in the institutional art system deserve closer attention. “Humble Folk” is a step forward in this direction.

Clark-Fleming and Ogletree are self-taught artists who grew up in agricultural communities in Southwestern Ontario and paint from memories of their early childhood experiences. Their pictures consist of animals, gardens, and activities that reflect everyday rural life, from attending the local fair and Trick-or-Treating, to tending crops and milking cows. For the late Clark-Fleming, painting became a means of recording memories of being with her father, spending time outdoors and in the barn, doing the farmwork they loved together. On a different trajectory, the surrealist pictures of Ogletree energize rural life through uncanny, often spooky iconography that includes psychedelic insects and kaleidoscopic flora. Together, their fantastical landscapes and ebullient vistas reflect a vision of agricultural communities that is both charming and under threat. Research demonstrates that rural Canada experiences rising costs of living, high unemployment, low wages, addiction, land development, pollution, soil degradation, and more. Their paintings ruminate on a way of life that might no longer be viable.