Vault showcase

By Melissa Piche Times Contributor

The Vault is getting ready for a new feature artist as Brent Laycock prepares to showcase his Symphonic Landscapes collection.

“I started painting formally with lessons when I was 8 years old,” said Laycock of his lengthy career in the arts. 

He graduated university with a BFA and MFA in painting. Fresh out of university, he got his first job in the arts working for the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) in the production department of media services. 

“Our job was to make things you couldn’t buy elsewhere,” he said of his time with the CBE.

In 1981 he started being a self-supporting freelance artist; this is where he flourished into the freelance landscape artist he is most known for. 

“This is more of a retrospective show,” said Laycock. “I was thinking we barely have enough to hang on our walls at home, but it turns out we had more than I thought. This represents mostly the work of my career. My primary interest is Alberta landscape.” 

Having grown up in Southern Alberta, he loves the variety in the landscape we are fortunate to have available. “Every direction you go you have something just a little bit different,” he said. “I always felt like my big motivation was to do things that brought joy to other people. I’m always thinking of new approaches and new things. And as I get older, those changes become more subtle than dramatic.” 

Laycock’s other collections can be found across Alberta – from Edmonton to Calgary, Waterton, Banff and Jasper. 

“I love painting outside,” he says, and with the warmer weather he is looking forward to getting outside to explore Alberta more. “Watercolour is a bit more portable and easy to manage outside.”

This show is called Symphonic Landscapes. 

“I loved listening to music,” said Laycock. “I found out that listening to music taught me a lot about abstraction. I see every painting as an abstract composition. There’s a relationship between colours, shapes and lines and textures. And if you put those together the right way, even if it does not represent anything – if it’s connected the right way – it generates a response.”

Laycock is very in tune with the correlation between music and his painting. He says music is the same, having a certain number of bars, repeating chorus, using certain cyclic patterns – if put together in the right way – forms a song. 

“My hope is that the viewers that come can see beyond the representation of the physical things like mountains and trees and look to see how does this colour relate to that and how does this texture work?” said Laycock. “What things are contrasting? If you can start to think about these things it can be a little more interesting.” 

His parting words for future artists: “Figure out what you want to do and work at it. Put the work in. If it’s enjoyable it doesn’t seem so much like work.” 

Laycock’s Symphonic Landscapes art collection can be viewed until May 27 in The Vault’s upper gallery. The Vault is open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.