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Charles Malinsky is an internationally acclaimed Canadian painter. His art has been featured in many international journals and publications. Malinsky’s paintings and drawings have been featured in numerous solo and major group exhibitions, and is represented in many prestigious private, museum, and corporate collections. These include: Fundació de les Arts i els Artistes, Barcelona, Spain (5 works); the Collection of the Victoria College of Art, Victoria British Colombia, Canada; Nickel Arts Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Michael Williams Collection, University of Victoria, Victoria , British Colombia, Canada (18 works); the Permanent Collection of the Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Colombia, Canada; the Seymour Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work can also be found in the private collections of notable celebrities such as Dr. Dre, Phil Everly, Fred Durst, Vin Diesel, David Caruso and others. The extraordinary achievements of his career have made him of one of the most dynamic figurative painters working in the 21st century.



Malinsky was born in 1956 in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and grew up in the isolation of the vast Canadian prairies. He earned his diploma from the Alberta College of Art and Design 1978. He spent his early professional years in Calgary as a graphic designer in educational television, winning a number of international awards for the small, obscure station. Malinsky states, "The sheer good fortune -- to be taken under the wing of a small group of the most talented and creative individuals I have encountered in my entire life, including Greg and Gary Crossley, Brian Huffman, John Blackie and Peter Ivens  -- was a revelatory experiences for me." In 1984, he took a posting at the Alberta College of Art and Design, where he taught drawing. It was at this point that Malinsky changed streams, devoting himself to the creation of pure art. It took seven years of dedicated studio work for him to find his voice as an artist. His first pubic exhibition at the Fran Willis Gallery in Victoria, British Colombia created a media sensation, and garnered wide public attention.

Malinsky’s richly complex, layered, visual narratives are emotionally clear and accessible. His suburban prairie upbringing provided him with a backdrop of physical and social isolation, and his early work became focused on the rift between what was experienced and what could not be said. Malinsky’s first exhibitions took place in the early 90s, during a time when figurative painting was not considered a legitimate, cutting edge genre for art. His approach flew in the face of the self-created, intellectual elitism of the deconstructivist movement of the time. He first received critical attention for depicting the dark, disturbing undercurrents of mainstream life, eloquently communicated to a popular reception through his figurative approach.


 
After living for ten years in Madrid, Spain, Charles Malinsky has recently returned to Canada. Read Less

The Black Coat Project began a s a simple notion that was produced by a sensory reaction. A number of black coats were acquired as costume pieces for the final chapter of The Journey Project, entitled, The Gate’s Of Heaven. One coat stood out from the rest in its pure luxury and sensual quality. I pondered the idea of whether or not a complete project might be ignited by this one single article of clothing.

By choice I made everything as simple as I possibly could, eliminating everything but the coat a woman and a pair of shoes. The coat and shoes became a uniform. From painting to painting they remained constant and unchanging amplifying the unique beauty of each woman. The women are not idealized clones. Their beauty is represented as it exists in real life. It’s is the individuality of each woman and how she responded to the coat that is represented.

As a narrative artist my fist challenge was to completely eliminate the narrative element from this new body of work. Without my interference the experience of bringing together woman and artifact would reveal it’s purpose and support it’s artistic merit. To create beautiful images is in itself a sufficient motive for making art. There are, as I have proven constantly over my career, many other levels that can be interwoven into a painting or series of paintings that enrich it’s value. The beauty is not optional but is a necessary constant as is truth and sincerity and passion.

In the past I have conceived and constructed my projects as vehicles to support socially relevant narratives. Many of which have dealt with difficult and disturbing material. In the case of The Black Coat Project I have challenged my own methods of creating a theatre in which to support the idea by allowing the object itself to suggest it’s purpose. The fist year of The Black Coat Project has been dedicated to following it’s inspiration and overcoming the logistical obstacles in it’s translation from idea to physical form. During this time, bit by bit the tiny pieces of a much bigger picture were presenting themselves to me.

Over my my more than 25 year career working with countless women I have developed wonderful friendships with many of them. During that time I have learned more than I expected and wished to about the physical and psychological abuse of women. This was not a feature of The Black Coat Project when I first started though I cannot say that it did not lurk deep in my subconscious.

In working with the women who now represent the first phase of the Black Coat Project I spent many hours with them. Not outlining my grand artistic vision and what function they would supply to it because they had no function. The were the entire point. Instead I asked and listened and observed to best understand who each of them were as individuals. This crystalized the potential of the Black Coat. What is represented in the first 15 paintings is a disturbing proportion of these women that are or have been victims of abuse.

It is from this that the Black Coat Project takes it’s purpose. Not as a Narrative vehicle but a symbol of this specific social crime that is committed against millions of women every minute of every day. The ambition of The Black Coat is to first be art. An Exploration and a celebration of female beauty. In conjunction with women’s groups and organizations It can also provide a tangible means of providing awareness of this social injustice and financial support to those working on the front lines. Read Less

“Of all the world’s warriors, artists are still the most noble and free.” ~ anonymous South African poet

When I lived in Spain, the horrors of the Franco years were just beginning to be talked about. For years after the dictator’s death, these events had been a taboo subject. One of the aspects of his reign that emerged was the role that artists played in the failed revolution. Every artist that I met of the previous generation had spent time in prison; some had been tortured. Artists were particularly feared by the fascists; they had the power, and the voice, to speak compellingly against the brutal regime.

In a more haphazard, intuitive way, I have been trying to be that kind of artist – to lend my talent and my voice to the causes of reason and civility. The quality in art that I most admire is the kind of harmony and clarity that touches deep in the soul. This is what I am compelled to deliver through my images. My experiences in Spain were not responsible for setting me on this course, but they did provide a tangible, historic context around what I had always felt was my duty as an artist -- to speak of the things we are not allowed to utter and provide lightening rods for collective feelings of anger, despair, and disgust. The subjects of, and audience for, my work are universal; I privilege no particular age, no gender, and no social strata. Perhaps because of its universal message, my work hangs in the boardrooms of international business conglomerates and the studios of iconic musicians. But what I am most proud of is the affection that the under-represented, disenfranchised and disaffected have for my art.

I feel that my ability to communicate with the collective zeitgeist through pictures comes with a responsibility to speak up, and speak out. My passion for picture making is grounded in this desire to engage the deepest currents driving our culture and society today – forces rooted in history, spiritual identity, and belief. I had the good fortune, early in my development as an artist, to understand that my talent for representation was a potent device with which to address cultural ideas, ideologies, and dogmas. As an artist, I can present ideas that go against the canon, with deconstructive methods our most trusted institutions are unable, and unwilling, to embrace. My iconographic lexicon is at once clear and complex; my exclusive use of a black and white palette in my drawings and paintings is conceived to focus the work – to bring the maximum attention to the figurative form, compositional design, and gestural choreographies of each visual narrative. Read Less