Jeff Mair

 Tamarack (The Elasticity of Distance, Memory and Time)

Acrylic paint on art board inside sealed envelope
4 1/8” x 9.5”
2020
Small panoramas viewed through the window of implied distance. Places
of experience become places of return. A sort of rearview mirror,
looking back while dreaming ahead.
I began making these works during quarantine as I became interested in
the sudden shift in expectations around place, memory and comfort. I
use scrap art board pieces, acrylic paint and standard office
envelopes. As part of the shared collective experience, I have begun
asking people to email me photos of a place of nature that might be
special to them but may now be a more difficult destination of
revisitation. A landscape of the past and hopefully one day again the
near future. From there, I paint the scene and seal it in an envelope
never to be opened.
Jeff Gordon Mair has a background in painting and media. Based in
Vancouver, BC with a BFA from UVIC and a BEd(Art) from UBC, he has
exhibited in Canada, the United States, South Korea and Japan. His art
practice deals with the plurality of perception as manifested through
material and digital manipulation. This approach considers the idea
that what we want to see and what we actually see may be very
different things. Information is often at odds with itself, both a
highly valued resource and a seductive manipulator. The work starts
from these foundations and then infuses recognizable objects and
images with an element of unpredictability. Preconceptions are
disrupted to reveal dualities between artifice vs reality, humour vs
fear and belief vs fact. jgmair.com