Peter Aspell: Saints and Sinners, Mystics and Madness
Peter Aspell was an artist of immense talent who explored in pictorial form the joys and despairs of the human condition, producing an extensive body of work throughout his long, prolific career. This exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Richmond Art Gallery (RAG), where a second exhibition, Peter Aspell: The Mad Alchemist, runs from January 23 to April 3, 2016 (opening reception on January 22, 7 to 9 p.m.) at the RAG. The exhibitions consist of a representative selection of artworks from the late 1980s to the time of the artist’s death in 2004. Aspell’s paintings and works on paper of figures and mythic landscapes, either richly layered with luscious colours, or rendered in a more restrictive palette consisting mostly of black, white, and grey, stood apart from the art of his contemporaries but nevertheless (and because of this) made an important contribution to the art of this region.
Peter Aspell exhibited regularly in commercial galleries in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Paris, and has many devoted collectors. Although he had a solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1958, participated in many group exhibitions there from 1942 through the early 1960s, and was included in the exhibition 7 West Coast Painters held at the University of British Columbia Fine Arts Gallery in 1959, more than 50 years have passed since his work has been examined in depth in a public gallery or museum exhibition.