Dominic Besner
Besner was born in 1965 in North Lancaster, Ontario. He completed his Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Montreal in 1992. This early education allowed him to focus his thoughts on the nature of the city and its components. Besner’s creative work is based on a mixed technique on canvas. He has a preference for oil sticks and their rich palette of colours as well as acrylic paint, structural mortar, China marker and aerosol paint. In addition to these materials, he uses a technique of application by the fingers and scraping of the canvas.
The emotional structure of Besner’s work expresses a renewed, richer and deeper view of life, based on line and colour. The resulting depiction is the image of a world in itself, which largely transcends the two dimensional limits of the canvas.
Dominic Besner’s work is often indicative of architectural structures. The inherent shapes of his art allow the artist the ability to depict a fantasy version of the city and its characters. Although the city is first and foremost an invention of the artist, it is often inspired by the formal architecture characteristic of medieval cities. The crosses, arches, arched windows, and towers are all recognizable elements of the medieval era. The layering of structures creates tension in the image, which cannot be read in a linear perspective. The painter combines a certain treatment of context and the artistic vocabulary of a period in time. Besner’s characters, which often appear to be in masks, are symbolic of the theater. Their expression of the ephemeral in life is rarely melancholy. The character is active, as a thinking being, or one that amuses. Besner’s characters enjoy unraveling themselves in front of us. The character is fully aware of our presence; it watches us, possibly even asking us the same questions which inspired the artist to create them. Besner's use of animals is as a symbolic iconography. They illustrate the profound and brutal passions that are at the core of history, mankind, and life on earth. Through the animal’s appearance and position, the artist paints the intensity surrounding him. This liveliness takes shape in his imaginary city, where violence and pleasure abound. The animal’s nature is an expression of the forces of life which can embody the playful or combative aspects of the soul. Besner’ completes his settings by adding fine black lines to evoke space or landscapes, a pattern, or a new figure. The line drawings also mark movement. Drawing allows the artist to reassert himself through and allows the spectator to gain entry into the artist’s pictorial practice.
His characters progress towards the future, like all human beings. They are creatures who are torn apart and gnawed by hope.
