By Josiah Bob Taundi

Expressionistic experimentation burst into life in a new exhibition No Explanation! currently running at Artpoint.

It’s the known and unknown of two prominent Calgary artists Jacqulynn Mulyk and Simon Aitchison. Both dared to break away from the comfort zones of their previous work but managed to remain on top of their craft despite the metamorphosis.

Most incredibly, both artists admit they don’t have full explanations of their own pieces!

Mulyk`s famous for her blissful cityscapes and flowers. She has painted many places in and around Calgary, Vancouver, New York and San Francisco, among others. With almost architectural precision and enhanced by collages, the paintings immortalised downtown buildings, cars, trams, parks/gardens, cafes and people – all executed in a riot of colours. (see Mulyk’s website www.burstandbloom.ca) Mixed media Spring Garden, Willingdon and Diversdero Street represents such that older order.

But recent Potatoes and Market Day indicated remarkable progress. Potatoes for instance, is a large acrylic painting of a market place that Mulyk frequents. From afar it appears like an abstract rendition but a closer look shows a very realistic picture of flower pots, wooden crates complete with rusting nails, etc. Colour and form unite in balanced harmony. Its compositional dexterity is perfect.

Her total revolt comes via the spiritual ”Point-Zero” and pyrograph series, essentially products of intuitive painting technique that affords the artist an unexpected outcome through spontaneity as opposed to predetermination. It’s the visual equivalent of the stream of consciousness in literature.

Even Mulyk was surprised with the result and admits she doesn`t have a complete explanation for series. Inadvertently, a motif of an open mouth emerged – consuming cake, snakes or even humans. We are what we eat.

Similar unpredictability recurs in her wooden pyrographs. The Ground is Black for example, is a complex apocalyptic scene of catastrophe, death, blood, despair and helplessness. Initially started as a poem, Mulyk says meaning may be “personal or global – personal problems or disasters like Haiti that we have little control over.”

Quantum science meets art in Simon Aitchison`s work. He questions the origins of life. It’s all so complicated, even the artist himself has a hard time explaining. This is a culmination of Aitchison`s experimentation with abstract expressionism.

Hitherto, for the past 13 years, he progressed from surrealism, figurative to abstract. Working in oil on canvas, Aitchison is a master of texture and detail.

Everything is carefully controlled: colours, tones, shapes, layers and texture. No brush stroke or colour splash accidents are tolerated. In The Hatching, the details become so fine one might need magnifying glasses to fully appreciate Aitchison`s intensity of detail. That closer look will reveal plants germinating into life, something hard to notice with a cursory look.

Only evokes the Big Bang theory, whilst Almost Alone But Not Quite is a large swirling impasto depicting an overwhelming blue sky over brown earth, convincing the viewer, by its sheer magnitude, that we are only micro-chromosomes in an infinite universe.

Incomplete is an almost plain crimson-red piece with occasional dark spots whose finish appears more like polished wooden surface rather than the oil on canvas it actually is, asserting Aitchison`s texture skills. He said the painting is about problems found in relationships.

• No Explanation! is running at Artpoint from March 5th till March 27th, 2010