Self-portrait, Celine Gabrielle

3 Questions: Artist & Curator in Conversation

1. Describe your working process as an artist  

 I start with an image, idea or a piece of clothing that inspires me. It has to speak to me. I’m slow. I work in many layers. I start with acrylic to block in my main colours and shapes quickly. Then I switch to oils. I take my time carefully studying my references and refining section by section. I love that my paintings look realistic from far but up close as I work it’s just abstract shapes and colours – like an illusion. I create because it’s fun, it challenges me and gives me energy. I’m a champion of colour and exuberance. I want the joy and pleasure I have making my works to go with them. Like coming home to a bouquet of wildflowers on the kitchen table – an unexpected pop a wow moment on an ordinary day.  

2. What was your source of inspiration for your work in the exhibition? How did the act of art making help you reflecting on and responding to the pandemic as an artist? 

 2020 has been a hard year for a lot of us, myself included especially in the first few months of the year as things really took a turn for the worst. Layering on top of that, other devastating world events and tragedies including the Nova Scotia mass shooting I was feeling very low, hopeless, and sad.  My joy, my creative energy had gone and I was left in a ball wrapped in blankets on the couch. I turned to one of my favourite shows and started binge watching Rupaul's Drag Race all over again. This show is a pop culture sensation overflowing with colour, creativity, comedy, ingenuity, self acceptance and jaw dropping fashion. It was exactly what I needed to escape. One episode in particular from 2017 there is an epic moment when one drag queen Valentina had to perform a lip sync but would not take off the mask they were wearing as part of their costume...and now here we are, ironic I thought, we all HAVE to wear masks everyday. I got an idea. I got off the couch and styled the look on my daughter, the only model I had access to during lockdown. Pandemic glam, gloves and a mask BUT make it fashion!  

3. How do you think visual art helps us understand the complex world around us? 

 I don’t know if visual art helps us understand the complex world around us; for me visual arts it is a way to escape. A way to take even just a moment to be in a different place or state if only in your own mind.