KELLY GOERZEN: Travels with My Mum
Reception: Saturday September 19, 2 - 4 PM
September 12 - October 17
Art Placement is delighted to present ‘Travels with My Mum’, Kelly Goerzen’s latest solo exhibition at the gallery and her first since 2023.

In this new collection of paintings, Kelly Goerzen continues to deliver the dynamic compositions, vibrant colour, and meticulous detail that collectors near and far have come to expect and admire in her work. Goerzen was raised in Saskatoon where she had the good fortune to attend Bedford Road Collegiate during the time when renowned watercolourist Reta Cowley taught there. She received four years of art instruction from Cowley, one of Saskatchewan’s most significant early artists. While Cowley’s influence is foundational, Goerzen has developed her own personal style, one that is significantly more realistic than her early mentor. In terms of charting an aesthetic lineage, she arguably has a much stronger affinity with the work of Ernest Lindner, another of Saskatoon's eminent early artists. Like Lindner, Goerzen has a masterful technical facility in capturing light and form with astonishing accuracy and almost photographic realism while at the same time maintaining a loose and painterly quality. It is an impressive balance that few contemporary prairie painters strike so perfectly. 

Once again focusing mostly on scenes and locations in and around the city of Saskatoon, Goerzen’s new paintings consistently deliver fresh interpretations of iconic Saskatoon landmarks and skylines. Most of her images are developed from photographs taken during her travels (with her Mum) along the riverbank, from various locations both within the heart of the city and out to the rural extremities of the Meewasin trail. Saskatoon is a city that blends nature and the built environment exceptionally well by centering its urban design around the South Saskatchewan River. With brush and shrubbery in the foreground, and the city often only glimpsed in the background, Goerzen’s paintings feel like a cross between a cityscape and a traditional landscape, a fitting representation of the way the city itself blends natural and man-made environments. 

Kelly Goerzen is a Saskatoon-based artist who has been represented by Art Placement since the gallery was first founded. She has exhibited her works with us consistently since 1979. Throughout these many years her paintings have been collected by individuals and institutions near and far, across Canada and abroad.