Liam Park recently graduated from Art and Entertainment Management at Capilano University in North Vancouver. He has been following his passions of composing and playing electronic music as a street entertainment, as well as creating visual art.
Liam is also passionate about the environment and maintaining the pristine beauty of our province so he is speaking out against some of the latest proposed oil and gas development.
While I do not agree with some of his positions I believe that he has developed a brilliant way of expressing himself through his art. To make his point he is appropriating some of Canada’s finest art work by the famous Group of seven then placing images showing how the ugliness of industry would look like in the same images.
Using digital technology he scales images and inserts the likenesses including reflections, shadows and other details so the new image created looks as though it is part of the original piece.
Of course viewers instantly recognize the famous paintings but the ugliness of industry combined with the original beauty of the work makes a loud statement.
Liam has promised to create a number of additional works and using them on Facebook to gather support for his position.
The first few I re-posted on my page and was surprised at how much conversation and likes it raised. I am hoping my support will result in more exposure for him and his work as it is exciting so see someone so focused on what is important to him.
Being a professional artist is a difficult vocation until one becomes well known and established. Currently he is marketing cards and prints through a web site:
Support a struggling artist today by re-posting some of his work, liking it or buying some of his cards.
The piece shown here demonstrates
what the works look like before and after he has inserted an image.
The haunting and simple images of what beautiful scenes could look like if we are not careful in the way we develop industry in our remote and beautiful country. The message and conversation he wants to spark, for those of us who support development of our resources and industry must consider before we charge full speed ahead. The lone voices that have the nerve to stand in opposition to the majority are necessary to keep the rest of us analyzing and questioning if we are going in the right direction and doing everything we can to protect what we should be valuing most. Most safety equipment and advancement in protecting our environment, children and communities has come because of these vocal minorities that caused us to sit back and re think what we were doing.
Congratulations son on your commitment to creating a better world for future generations through mass exposure to the questions you want reviewed, through your art rather than destructive protest.