Jaclyn Shoub. Near Airport #2. 1997
Oil and Toner on Mylar Mounted on Masonite.

Jaclyn Shoub. Monochromatic #2. 2006

Jaclyn Shoub. Untitled. 2001.

Among my favourite contemporary Canadian painters, Jaclyn Shoub's pale, altered photocopies are printed onto transparent mylar and fixed atop swipey, drippy monochromatic oil paintings. The similarity to Turner is unmistakable. However they remain non derivative. She lacks Turner's ambition, and the paintings serve as subtle atmospheric notations of that rarefied passivity one feels waiting in airports or in transit. A kind of suspension of the ordinary laws of humdrum interaction with reality. But is the technique -- photographic decals as counterpoint to abstraction -- too easy?

There are artists from the old world, whose work we encounter so often in print that it's easy to take their greatness for granted. Leafing through an old pile of New Yorker's I read what is, to my mid one of the most accurate and thought-provoking critiques of the paintings of JMW Turner.

...Unlike John Constable, his quieter, more profound peer, Turner conveys only irritable ambition. We must never forget to admire him. This tires. Turner’s style is synthetic, leaning on picturesque convention (never more so than when most nearly abstract) while brazening arbitrary audacities. He overlays splooshes of paint with passages of tidy drawing like bathtub decals.

Schjeldahl, Peter. "Heavy Weather". New Yorker. 7/28/08.

J.M.W. Turner. Peace - Burial At Sea. 1842

And of course...

J.M.W. Turner. Rain, Steam and Speed. 1844.