Like most of us, Lonigan Gilbert spent the last few years more online than ever before.

But it was even more necessary for the visual artist than most: the beginning stages of the pandemic also saw Gilbert dealing with the medical diagnosis of a brain tumor. As he was receiving treatment, he moved back in with his mother and sisters, and found himself pretty removed from the outside world.

“I basically observed from a distance everything that was going on,” he says. “Not only globally, through news, but also just through social media. … I got to see a lot of people that I know show parts of themselves, in that time, under all that stress, that I hadn’t seen before.”

Gilbert turned their unfinished basement into a studio, for when he had energy to work. The results comprise much of Transmission, running for the next few months at the Art Gallery of St. Albert. It’s Gilbert’s first-ever solo exhibition, which collects his painted explorations of the mostly-digital way we’ve spent the past few years communicating—including how divided our culture has become.

  
Head + Shoulders, 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 48x60”

“There are certain political angles in the show,” he says. “I know that politics was also one of those things that became explosive during the pandemic […] people got pretty divided, so I felt the need to focus less on myself when it came to the work, and just play the observer.”

He notes that working with gallery curator Emily Baker offered a much-appreciated outside eye for deciding on which pieces would work well together in the exhibition.

“It was nice to have some professional insight on what she thought would work best with the show,” he notes. “Some of her suggestions came down to colour and what would play off of each other. And also what fit together in terms of the key idea behind the show, which is how important communication is, and how it was affected during the pandemic.”

Life After Covid, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 48x48”

The pieces they chose are rich with detail: they’re large, busy works of paint, which all took shape in the process of their creation. That’s why some of them feature words as well as images: Gilbert found that, with what was emerging on canvas, sometimes some words felt necessary.

“None of these pieces in the show had a plan when I created them,” he says. “There were no preliminary sketches. It was made up as I went. There were times when I felt a few words were definitely needed just to tie it up, [and] do a little bit of explaining here and there. But also I found that, at times, they could even be poetic with how they worked with the visuals.”

Gilbert’s improvisational way of working gave a certain sense of discovery to the process, one he hopes immerses viewers in the works as they explore their intricate details. He points to a recent trip he took to Winnipeg to see a Kent Monkman exhibit, and how powerful those works felt—enough to drop the stresses of the outside world, and just connect with what was before him.

“I don't know if my stuff will do it,” he laughs. “But that immersion level—I do find it rare, but I love it when it happens.”

By: Paul Blinov

Transmission runs from October 6th to November 12th at the Art Gallery of St. Albert.

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