Everyone processes experiences differently. For B.C.-based artists Angie Marchinkow, Nicole Young and Emily Kirsch, their upcoming North Van Arts show, Tactile Memories, showcases a collection of paintings and textiles, expressing their own memories and experiences. Tactile Memories encourages its audience – at the CityScape Community Art Space Gallery (Sept. 27 to Nov. 9) – to engage with the show on a closer level than usual.

“This is part of the point, right? It’s the tactile nature of art,” says Marchinkow. “It’s to be walked up to and looked at, to see the texture in real life, to have that full experience.”

Following intuition in the creation process, Marchinkow says, is at the heart of the pieces in this exhibition.

Both she and Young will be giving an artists talk on Sept. 28, the day of the exhibition’s opening reception.

An intuitive process

Marchinkow is a Kelowna-based multi-disciplinary artist – a painter, writer, photographer and vocalist – who says her relationship between lived experience and art is what inspires her.

“I have an experience and I experience it with multiple senses. So in my case, I would physically find the need to express that with colour and movement, so it comes out in paint,” says Marchinkow.

According to the artist, many of her pieces center around honing in on her own synesthesia, a phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sense leads to the involuntary experience of another.

“There’s always something that prompts me to start a piece. And my work is pretty physical,” said Marchinkow, who creates large-scale abstract paintings. “But generally, I am creating a visual representation of my lived experiences.”

For her, the importance of this intuitive process is part of what ‘Tactile Memories’ aims to put on display.

“Noticing those emotions and those expressions and the need to express. Noticing yourself and your own evolution. And the point is to be that, to do it, to make it real, and in my case, make it something that’s tactile that I can see and feel and touch,” she adds.

Marchinkow says her art – similar to both Young and Kirsch – is abstract and expressive. Stemming from a shared approach to artistic creation and a shared arts community in Kelowna, she says it was Young’s idea for the three artists to collaborate in a group show about “how and why we make art.”

The exhibition’s statement puts forth the idea of ‘collective touch points,’ created by the three artists. According to Marchinkow, despite their difference in mediums, what will tie the show together is the tactile nature of their pieces.

Kirsch will be exhibiting her abstract textile pieces that she achieves through rug-tufting.

“[The pieces] are so unique and beautiful, and some are so large, which is just awesome to see – it’s an abstract painting, but as a rug,” says Marchinkow.

Explaining the kind of pieces viewers can expect from Young, Marchinkow said a variety of paintings, textiles and found materials are sliced and sewn together to create complex, tactile pieces.

As for her own work, viewers can expect raw canvas paintings that aim to honour the material itself. She says that audiences can expect to see a range of textures, from thinned out, watercolour like paint, to large splashes and drips.

Overall, Marchinkow says she hopes audiences are able to see, and feel, the art in real life.

“We live in a world where people are looking at their phones and looking at even my own paintings, people say, Oh, look at Angie’s latest painting! And they’re just looking at a tiny phone screen – at something that is 48 inches by 48 inches in real life,” she says. “I hope people can enjoy the practice of going and experiencing it there in the real world, and it’s not just a comment on digital media.”

For more information on the exhibiit visit: www.northvanarts.ca