John Kissick

John Kissick was born in Montreal in 1962. He received his MFA from Cornell University in 1987. He is a writer who has published an art history texts, Art: Context and Criticism, published reviews and is currently the Director of the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Painting on lead, copper and large plywood constructions typified his early production but in the past three years he’s moved to canvas and paper where he’s been occupied with the creation of intimate but ambiguous spaces, capable of both exposing and disguising their contingency to historical conventions of abstraction. The central issue of his work has always been the question of making abstract paintings that are both ironic and authentic. Kissick agrees with Milan Kundera's notion of the "beautifying lie" and states that the history of painting is many things, but at its core it is a fiction.