Michelle Drapeau

Hôtel Château Laurier

Jack Bishop: A Traditional Stoppping Place

Jack Bishop’s paintings combine sets of views from his experience of the road. They depict highways interspersed with billboards, gas stations, fast foods and strip malls. In a schematic and colourful rendering, the artist reproduces the recognizable logos major chains omnipresent in North America to achieve what he ingeniously calls brandscapes.

Bishop subverts the Canadian landscape tradition by recognizing the real impact of urban sprawl on the land. These painted environments reflect the prevalence of cars and hyperconsumerism in our current lives. The natural and the artificial coexist nonetheless: despite the imposition of industrial infrastructures on the landscape, nature continues its course with its changing seasons and climate.

Jack Bishop, Box Store Sunset, 2017 © Michelle Drapeau