Category: Artists

Paintings by LW Foden

Opens March 12th ~ Runs to April 13th

Previews and Pre-sale – March 12th to March 15th

LW Foden, Larry Foden – Foden to everyone who knows him – has a long association with the gallery owners.  A limited selection of his work has been show at Studio22 over the years – a few prints and one large, expansive canvas – giving us a nibble but not enough to sink our teeth into.  Now, after several years of plotting and planning, Stingio22 is finally in a position to bring an entire body of work from this BC artist to the gallery in Kingston, Ontario.  The West has come East.

Throughout his career, LW Foden has managed to capture the human element of some of Canada’s unique views — but you won’t find a single person in his work. Born in Belleville, Ontario and raised in Kapuskasing, Foden grew up surrounded by vast forest and waterways. He considers those views to be his first inspiration. 

I see figures [in the earth]. I don’t necessarily exaggerate them or in any way set them apart but they are there.

Foden spent much of his life working and developing as an artist in Toronto. In 1994 Foden visited a friend on Galiano Island, British Columbia. What started as a six week vacation became a permanent home. He heard about a small cottage on the seaside overlooking the Georgia Strait and jumped on the opportunity. Still on the island today, his address has only changed once. He lived in that very cottage for over 20 years and now lives centrally in the small town on Galiano.

These are the building blocks of the world. I see it in a sort of archaeological kind of way. I guess that’s how I see it; these are the bones of the earth.

Foden’s current body of work is Galiano. Bones of the Earth is a collection of paintings from his years on the Island. This is where you’ll see his ability to anthropomorphize landscape.  The relationship between the rocks and the sea is captured from the vantage of his cottage on the shore. In the 20 years he spent with that view he watched the constant of the rocks and the change of the sea and imagined the lifetime they lived together before he came along.

Bones of the Earth can mean something as simple as the physical components that make up our landscape but it can — at times — be about the deeper story behind those components. 

Sometimes I get caught up with mythology and stories and sometimes it’s just big rock in the water.

Foden’s work resonates with residents of Canada, even to those unfamiliar with the west coast.  It is our sky, our waters.  His work, now available for sale in Kingston, Ontario, gives buyers the opportunity to have a piece of the west coast here in the east.

L.W. Foden attended the Ontario College of Art in the early 60s and later studied at the Vancouver College of Art.  He was the lead costume designer in the University of Windsor’s Theatre Department for three years and was later the Props Master at Toronto’s Centre Stage Theatre for two years.  In the early 80’s, after many years of exploration in a myriad of art forms, he devoted himself to painting by establishing a studio in Toronto where he worked for over a decade before resettling on Galiano Island.