Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “All Night I Heard a Singing Bird,” an exhibition of new works by Ontario-based artist Sky Glabush. Glabush’s paintings consider the ways in which art, nature and interiority shape our sense of ourselves and the world around us.
Sky Glabush’s paintings engage the totality of human experience. His works place us in the midst of visual, intellectual and emotional happenings. The scale of many of Glabush’s pictures - some 8 x 6 feet and larger - lends an insistent physicality to his canvases, the surfaces of which are built up with paint and sand applied in layers in the course of working a given image to fruition.
There is an intense one-to-one relation between the viewer and the motif in Glabush’s work. The result is something we know, or might think we know - a forest, a field, the play of color across a night sky - that then becomes almost immediately something bigger, an invitation to an awakening perhaps, a transcendence of place and personhood, nature and abstraction. We might find ourselves in the midst of a deep forest with only a hint of light. We might stand on the shores of a vast lake, its waves dancing with the brilliant hues of the sun traveling across a noonday sky.
Sky Glabush’s pictures require that we look again and again in our efforts to perceive more information than can be seen at any one time. In order to find our position - to find ourselves amongst the pictorial terms of his painting - we must center ourselves in relation to the picture itself, proprioceptively, allowing our eyes to deeply wander into painterly space determined by perspective, shape, color and edge. Glabush’s paintings figure internal landscapes by means of depicting exterior ones; they remind us of the ways in which our interiority is figured by what we experience around us; they reflect on the passing of time, where we have been, what we have done, and what the future might hold.
Art is a “poem of quietness” for a “current most mysterious,” painter Mark Tobey once wrote. “Everything I need is right here,” poet Al Purdy commented on the woods around his Roblin Lake cabin east of Toronto. Poets and painters come to know the feeling of an experience. They observe it, sense it, inhabit it deeply. They start us off on our own respective journeys, inviting us to consider ourselves, others and the world in which we live.
Sky GLABUSH (b. 1970 Alert Bay, BC) received his BFA from the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK) and his MA from the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB). Sky Glabush’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); and Stephen Friedman Gallery (New York, NY; London, UK). Glabush’s paintings are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada and other major museums. Recent group shows include, “Friends in Both Places” (Nichelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY, 2025); “The Moth & The Thunderclap,” Modern Art (London, UK, 2023); “BodyLand,” Galerie Max Hetzler (Berlin, Germany, 2022); “Unnatural Nature: Post-Pop Landscapes,” Acquavella (New York, NY, 2022); and “Sky Glabush and Johannes Nagel,” Cordonhaus Städtische Galerie Museum (Cham, Germany). Glabush’s work has been included in exhibitions at Arsenal Contemporary (Montreal,QC); Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery (Hong Kong); Saatchi Gallery (London, UK); University of Western Ontario (London, ON); Galerie de l’UQAM (Montréal, QC); and Rideau Hall (Ottawa, ON). His work is included in such collections as Harvard Museums (Cambridge, MA); Arsenal Contemporary (Montreal, QC); National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON); Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Calgary, AB); Bank of Montreal (Toronto, ON); Burnaby Art Gallery (Burnaby, BC); Colart Collection (Montreal, QC); Ivey Collection (Toronto and London, ON); MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina, SK); McIntosh Gallery, (London, ON); McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Vaughan, Ontario); Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon, SK); Museum London (London, ON); University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK). His work has been featured in publications such as Tate Magazine, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, Toronto Star, and Globe and Mail. Glabush lives and works in London, ON.
Sky Glabush’s exhibition, “All Night I Heard a Singing Bird,” is on view November 15, 2025 - January 17, 2026, with an opening reception for the artist Saturday, November 15 from 5-8 PM.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday from 11-5. For additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 323-507-2037. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065.
