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Lyrical Lines: Drawings by James Culleton

September 18-October 24, 2008 @ The Folk Exchange

Opening September 18th 7-9pm
Lyrical Lines is a collection of drawings inspired by music.

This exhibition includes drawings of The D-Rangers, Righteous Ike, The Perpetrators, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Los Lobos, Benwah, Corb Lund, Stonypoint, The Home Cooked Meals, The Undesirables, Madrigaia, Chic Gamine, Nathan, Andrew Neville & the Poor Choices, Scott Nolan, Al Simmons, Gregor, The Western States, The Jake Brakes, Percy Tuesday, Antibalas, Big Dave Maclean, The Cockroaches, Katie Moore, Lew Dite, The Sadies, The Weber Brothers, Bobby Starr, The Smoky Tiger, Lonesome Pine Special, The JakeBrakes, Matt Monsoon and the Riffriders, and many more…

Artist’s Statement

I draw my environment as a way of recording my existence. I collect these drawings of my environment and they become my personal nostalgia. Collecting represents the most rudimentary way to exercise control over the outer world: by laying things out, grouping them, handling them.” I relentlessly draw my surroundings, enjoying the knowledge of this self pleasure, this self-knowing.
One of the techniques I use is called blind contour drawing, which involves drawing without looking at the paper. Following the contours of what is seen, but not looking at what is represented, allows the hand to “feel” the environment.

Biography

Born in St.Boniface, James Culleton studied painting and drawing at the University of Manitoba, where he received his BFA Honors in 1997. He has participated in exhibitions at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, The University of Manitoba, The West End Cultural Centre, The Label Gallery, the Graffitti Gallery, ace art inc, articule and the Portage and District Arts Centre and has had solo exhibitions at St.Boniface College, The Pavilion Gallery, and the Kozen Gallery in Montreal, QC.

His art has been in publications in Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. His work belongs to private collections in Winnipeg, Calgary, Regina, Toronto, Montreal, and Hamilton, New Zealand. He recently was a professional guest artist at ArtCity, and has taught drawing to children and adults at the Living Prairie Museum.

In 2006, he received a grant from the conseil des arts et lettres du Quebec to rediscover his French roots through blind contour drawing. Using a GPS to document his movements, he traveled throughout the province of Quebec using blind contour drawing to research his personal history, and created a weblog as an online diary of drawings.