Image: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
The Art Gallery of Ontario has highlighted Anishnaabe artist Bewabon Shilling’s 'Field Series – Purples' (2024) in a new online feature that presents the work as an immersive landscape of colour. The AGO describes the painting as one in which the horizon line “lives beyond the canvas,” allowing viewers to enter what the gallery calls a sea of vibrant colour rather than a conventional representational scene.
According to the AGO’s Foyer newsletter and related page, the work moves between memory and perception and between figuration and abstraction. The gallery says Shilling’s practice engages with the geographical and emotional aspects of place, framing the painting not only as a landscape image but also as a work shaped by feeling and experience. The feature says that, in 'Field Series – Purples', the effect is close to stepping into a field of flowers on a warm afternoon.
The newsletter also situates Shilling within a multi-generational artistic family. It notes that he is the son of the late artist Arthur Shilling (1941–1986) and the older brother of artist Travis Shilling, and says that all three artists are represented in the AGO Collection. The gallery says Bewabon Shilling works in his family’s studio on Rama Mnjikaning First Nation, a studio built by his father. It also says his work focuses on the landscapes and environments around Lake Couchiching and the Black River.
The AGO’s account outlines a process that begins outdoors and continues in the studio. Shilling often starts works en plein air and then develops them into final abstract forms indoors, the gallery says. In the feature, Shilling is quoted saying, “When you are painting landscapes in your studio... a new door opens.” The remark appears in the context of the AGO’s discussion of his movement from observed landscape toward abstraction.
The painting featured in the newsletter is also identified in the image credit line as an AGO work: 'Field Series – Purples', 2024, oil on canvas, measuring 121.9 x 182.9 cm. The credit notes that it entered the collection through a purchase made with funds from the Greg Latremoille Fund in 2025, and gives the work number 2025/1049.
The Shilling feature appeared alongside several other AGO newsletter items, including coverage of Edna Taçon, J.E.H. MacDonald and Zak Ové, but the main focus of the release is Bewabon Shilling’s painting and the gallery’s reading of its visual field. The AGO presents the work as an example of how Shilling uses colour to stretch the idea of landscape while keeping attention on place, memory and the formal possibilities of abstraction.
