There's something strangely intimate about the sketchbooks at Gallery Page and Strange. In some cases, like with Karen Kulyk's packed hard covers, you become privy to the view from her window on travels from Stockholm to Toronto or the differing styles she experiments with, like detailed street scenes that give way to the more graphic ink gardens displayed on the wall. PAPER is an exhibit devoted to the artist's process and the initial ideas and sketches that contribute to a final piece. Nowhere is this link more clear than with Jonathan Johnson's striking oil paintings. "Toronto, Towers" and "Mount Royal, Montreal" are both cityscapes---blocks of blunt black buildings illuminated by splattering of colour and cloudy shading. From his preliminary sketches, building outlines can only hint at what his paintings will become. It's interesting to see what different artists focus on in PAPER--- from the bright markers of Susan Tooke to the simple gouache of Istran Zsako's warrior series---all of it a fleeting glimpse behind the gallery frames.
To March 1, Gallery Page and Strange, 1869 Granville Street
