Born in Newmarket, Ontario, Ronald Boaks has been exhibiting for more than 30 years. He is best known for his bold expressive
canvasses that celebrate colour and surface as much as they define his ongoing search for balance and beauty. His paintings draw on
personal memory and history as inspiration because for Boaks, the activity of art-making is always a road to self-discovery, anchored in
the richness of the past.
With his latest series of paintings, Spirit Arise, Boaks is trying to capture the “lightness of being, essence of life, state of grace, of being
alive right now.” In his own words:
In 2013, two very dear people to me died. Awhile after their passing, I began to feel lighter in “spirit”, as if they were now free, that
it was okay for me to feel that too. This lightness is translated into these paintings as the spirit or cloud entity, surrounded by rich,
soft colour. The paintings are grounded by the almost drafted line, measured, as it were, like distance markers on a map. The X and Y
coordinates are usually there, as are some of my recognizable markings.
Boaks’ photographic series Still Life plays on the vernacular of traditional still life art while using a modern vocabulary of personal objects
to carefully choreograph vignettes in front of his abstract paintings. His deliberate display of objects and use of allusion, metaphor and
optical effects prompt the view to carefully contemplate his work.