Known for building her compositions out of puzzle-like segments drawn from her travels and magpied from painting’s past, Monica Tap’s latest constructed landscapes introduce a new element to her practice.  In Rocks, Water, Trees, Tap’s signature collage-like treatment of painting forms the foundation for a more intuitive and place-based approach. Developed out of a two-month residency at the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland, the canvases in this exhibition represent a sustained study developed alongside a daily practice of plein air painting. Compelled by a fascination with the immediacy of making in such a rugged and ancient place, Tap was able to further her interest in how location can trigger memory, akin to how painting readily conjures its own past. By documenting her surroundings in this way, Tap channels a romance as old as painting itself, where being present is the pathway to capturing life’s energy. In a time when we need it most, the works in Rocks, Water, Trees generously cast a spell on us, allowing the rest of the world to melt away, even if just for a moment.

Monica Tap is a Toronto-based artist and educator whose work takes a conceptual and systematic approach to unpacking codes of pictorial illusionism and perception.. Her work has been featured in numerous art publications and presented in exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, including MKG127 (Toronto, ON), Peter Robertson Gallery (Edmonton, AB), Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina, SK), Wells College (Aurora, New York), Gallery Roy (Zülpich, Germany) and the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. Tap has received many grants and awards, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant for her project, “Translation as a Strategy of Renewal in Painting”. Tap holds an MFA from NSCAD University and is a professor in the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph.