Marion wagschal drawings of animals

This rare, understated yet undeniably replete survey of Marion Wagschal’s works on paper from more than four decades convinces us that she possesses an eye that is at once feral, ferocious and entirely voluptuous.

Her reputation stems from a figurative painting practice that has few parallels in Canada and a teaching practice (now ended) at Concordia University that has influenced scores of young women artists.

She has explored the human figure, living and dying, for decades, in painting and drawing, and this exploration has entailed both a harrowing sense of surgical precision in the rendering—and the harrowing up of a sense of our finitude.

When she was younger, she explored Biblical themes with rare abandon, as in her portraits of figures such as Abraham and Isaac, but she was equally given to studying, at the closest quarters, the unbearable minutiae of the quotidian.

I mean, the myriad idiosyncrasies, flaws and fault