Joseph Plaskett | "The Poetry of the Everyday" at Bau-Xi Gallery

The Poetry of the Everyday offers an intimate look at Joseph Plaskett’s longstanding interest in the spaces and objects that shape our daily lives. From richly arranged still lifes to quietly observed interiors, Plaskett brings a thoughtful approach to the familiar, finding depth and beauty in seemingly simple subjects. His distinctive use of colour, light, and expressive brushwork gives these ordinary scenes a sense of warmth and presence, revealing the extraordinary within the everyday.

Exhibition statement:

Joseph Plaskett’s evocative paintings of still lifes and interior spaces invite us to slow down and attend to the quiet drama of everyday life. Across these works, familiar objects - flowers, vessels, books, furniture, and domestic arrangements - become subjects of sustained contemplation.

Rather than treating the still life as a fixed tradition, Plaskett uses it as a means of exploring light, colour, space, and the intimate rhythms of looking. His interiors are similarly charged with a sense of presence. Rooms appear both inhabited and momentarily still, their furnishings and objects arranged with an attentiveness that transforms the ordinary into something quietly significant.

Plaskett’s approach is marked by a deep engagement with the history of European painting, yet his work remains distinctly personal. His compositions balance structure with spontaneity, allowing colour and brushwork to animate objects and spaces without diminishing their material character.

Bringing together a selection of Plaskett’s still lifes and interiors, this exhibition considers the ways in which the artist found richness in the everyday. These paintings ask us not simply to look at objects or rooms, but to experience the act of looking itself: the passage of light across a surface, the resonance of colour, and the quiet poetry contained within ordinary things.

About Joseph Plaskett:

Joseph Plaskett (1918-2014) is considered one of Canada’s most talented and established painters. In the spring of 2001, he was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art. Since the 1940s, he has had over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with work in major public, private and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. He has exhibited with Bau-Xi Gallery, both in Vancouver and Toronto, since 1973.

Born in 1918 in New Westminster, B.C., Plaskett studied art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London and Paris. He previously lived in Paris, then England where he passed away in 2014. Plaskett's chosen subjects have always been intimate expressions of everyday life – interiors, still life, and portraits of friends and models. There is a warm humanity to his work, a love of light, form and colour that is evident in every painting he produces. The paintings are superbly composed and masterworks of visual delight.