A newly opened installation at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery is the embodiment of flow state. Teryl Mullock’s large-scale artworks — collectively titled Transformed by Water — are simultaneously the result of Mullock’s focused fascination with water’s evocative potential, and the variegated, ubiquitous character of H2O itself.
“I noticed that water had become a formative element in my artistic practice,” said Mullock during a crowded opening reception on July 26, drawing parallels between his artistic practice and his subject matter. “You hear creatives speak of a flow state, the creative space where stuff happens. For me, this could be achieved by letting go of intention, entering a kind of indeterminate space, a state of flux.”
Like creativity, Mullock observed, water relentlessly changes shape and switches states: from vapour to rain to ice.
“Water resonates in our lives,” he added. “It washes over us like music, like swells of the ocean, echoes of waves crashing on the shore. In a time before iPhones — before cameras — water was our first mirror: giving us a glimpse of ourselves.”
Some of Mullock’s large abstracts have even evolved over time. His mixed-media work spiegel im spiegel (mirror[s] in the mirror) — created under the influence of music by Estonian classical composer Arvo Pärt — was originally completed in 2022. He reworked it this year, adjusting its colour harmonies and contours. He had been content with the painting’s original form in 2022. But with the passage of three years, the artist himself had evolved. “It just struck me like a ton of bricks,” Mullock said. “When I brought it out recently, I thought: wow, that’s so wrong.”
Metamorphosis comes naturally to Mullock. He spent nearly four decades as a professional architect, working with firms in Montreal and Vancouver, and his own Gibsons-based practice. He launched his professional art career in 2016, exhibiting at galleries on the Sunshine Coast and Metro Vancouver. (Transformed by Water is due to be shown at the Hearth Art Gallery on Bowen Island after its stint in Gibsons.) As a singer and songwriter, he is particularly attuned to the musical influences that shape his visual output.
His work never gone is named for a song by Irish musician James Vincent McMorrow (“So you can lay your head against mine / I leave it here to take the weight / Of every little thing / You make exist,” McMorrow sings). When creating the image, Mullock cut material into organic shapes, and imposed a rule: the shapes, once added to this canvas, were unalterable. Everything that was added must find a way to exist in relationship to what came first. The result is an image that is simultaneously concrete and atmospheric: a surge of momentum (a bird? a river?) tracks its fractured course across an opalescent sky.
In the jungle line, its richly hued meditation on the undersea world is inspired by a visual reference: jellyfish tentacles documented in the book that accompanied the 2020 film My Octopus Teacher. (The title stems from one of Joni Mitchell’s infectious tracks on her 1975 album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns.)
Mullock acknowledges the chasm between his approach to the architectural vocation — precise and stolid — and his abstract painting. That doesn’t mean it’s any less exacting. “There’s a looseness at first,” he observed. “I would say I let go of control completely. But at some point when I find where it’s going and once I realize what it’s going to be, it’s like a piece becomes a very complex piece of engineering. Then I go: how the hell will I do this?”
A three-dimensional work — enoch’s meditation — hangs at the centre of the gallery, the result of layering semi-opaque materials into an exaltation of sculptural transparency. Its title is a tribute to American jazz composer Robert Glasper, whose own process mirrors Mullock’s: originally released in 2005, Glasper re-rendered Enoch’s Meditation three years later to riff on Barack Obama’s election to the presidency.
Teryl Mullock’s Transformed by Water continues at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Aug. 17. Mullock will be working in the gallery and welcoming visitors from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 5, 6 and 7.
