Welcoming Artist Mike Rachlis

Canvas Gallery is excited to welcome Toronto artist Mike Rachlis.

My recent work is motivated by visual tension, trying to create works that are at conflict with themselves while remaining cohesive. Being most influenced by the optimism, idealization, grandiosity and severity of Romanticism. Works from this era as well as source material from a variety of sources are referenced with mocking respect. With this starting point these works are often obscured and having large parts removed, edited or blurred, causing the paintings to exist somewhere between realism and abstraction. This has allowed me to expand my focus from strictly figurative painting to include landscape and still life. Making images that dissolve the distinctions between subject, background and paint begin to blur. By celebrating the past, the prestige and preciousness of painting while concurrently abusing them I aim to highlight how brief and fleeting the things that shape our existence really are.