Sky Glabush

Canadian artist Sky Glabush subverts traditional painterly archetypes and presents landscape, still life and portraiture through a historic lens. Critic Sarah Milroy remarks that his paintings investigate “the legacies of art, expressing a special connection to the European traditions of Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke, in particular the work of Nolde, Kirchner, Munch, Kupka and Paul Klee.” Milroy explains, “These historic works combine in his imagination with some of the influences from his own lived experience, raised as he was in a variety of alternative, back-to-the-land communities on the west coast of British Columbia.”

Primarily figurative with undercurrents of abstraction, Glabush’s large-scale surreal paintings tell a story as they shift in and out of focus. Milroy writes, “Narrative has long been deemed inessential to the art of painting, but Glabush seems to invite the storytelling impulse as we inevitably set about the task of supplying meaning.”

Glabush’s paintings are underpinned by a rigorous drawing practice and exist as a meeting point for different ideas and approaches. “The architecture of the drawing is embedded in the materials,” the artist says, “All the paintings have gone through this process of getting the structure up through the drawing, breaking it down and rebuilding it through colour.” He often mixes sand into the paint to build texture and to erase but not conceal the labour in his work. This rich surface is a magnet on which bold pigments vibrate and infuse the paintings with a humming energy.

Glabush lives and works in London, Ontario and is an Associate Professor of Visual Art at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. Born in Alert Bay, British Columbia in 1970, Glabush received his BFA from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and his MA from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. The artist has had solo exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Clint Roenisch, Toronto, Ontario; Projet Pangée, Montreal, Québec and Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, Norway. In 2020 his work was exhibited at National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.

In September 2024, Glabush’s solo exhibition, ‘The letters of this alphabet were trees’, opened at Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York. Glabush had a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, in early 2023. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany; Acquavella, New York, Cordonhaus Städtische Galerie Museum, Cham, Germany; University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario; Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal, Québec and Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Ontario.