Toronto based painter Leslie Norgate’s newest body of work, Refuge, is exhibiting in our Feature Gallery throughout the month of March. This is Norgate’s first exhibition with Abbozzo Gallery and it explores the incandescence in the everyday of her local geography – the streets and sidewalks of Toronto’s West end.

Norgate’s compositions are typically worked from photo reference, collaging photos in her studio the old-fashioned way with scissors and tape. Norgate then goes about editing and interpreting the paintings, seeking to recreate the aura of the moment the camera oft betrays, and in doing so leaves us with a product that delivers the essence of a place better than a lens ever could.

Employing beautiful combinations of loose brushstrokes and shallow reliefs of the palette knife, Norgate’s distinct style captures the painterly feeling of her Parkdale subject matter. Norgate’s impressive control and utilization of light is apparent throughout her work: perhaps exemplified best in the midnight vignette of Winter Night, Sorauren Park or the early day amble of November Morning, Marion Street. Through her practice, Norgate hypnotizes and engages our phototropic sensibilities and ultimately welcomes contemplation. Often drawing inspiration from her walks around the neighbourhood, captured is also the patterned beauty of mundane architectures – such as the steel and concrete girders of local underpasses as seen in Double Underpass, Lakeshore & Colborne Lodge.

There is a certain art of noticing beheld in the artwork, meditative contemplations about the world around us and suggestions of the refuge we might find in taking the time to enjoy it.

– Blake Zigrossi, Associate Director