Dissatisfied with painting, this artist re-imagined it from the ground up

In a small Hamilton gallery, visitors step off Barton Street and into the caves where painting began. Other artworks there recall the chapel walls of Renaissance Italy or the leafy ornaments of Gothic Europe. But none of it could be from anywhere but here and now.

Around the ad hoc exhibition space, Hamilton-based artist Gabriel Baribeau has prepared traditional frescoes from hyper-local materials, like foraged clay and mussel shells. He paints with mud, pine tar and industrial soot on recycled cardboard and scrap metal. He uses shipping pallets like stretcher bars.

After 10 years dedicated exclusively to oil painting, Baribeau found himself feeling disillusioned with the medium. “I was dissatisfied with the way paintings existed, so very detached from our reality,” he says.

The techn