Harvey’s paintings capture the quiet pulse of a city in flux, spaces often dismissed as banal or overlooked become powerful vessels for memory, history, and the relentless passage of time. Ottawa is undergoing significant transformation: rapid development, gentrification, and shifts in community life are altering the city’s architectural and social fabric. Through his brush, Harvey preserves the afterglow of spaces on the brink of change, revealing what lingers even as the city moves forward.
In Pigeons, Harvey subtly gestures to the coexistence of nature and the urban, and the traces of human presence etched into weathered walls. The work speaks to the resilience of place, even as it is transformed. The afterglow that gives the exhibition its name is not just about light or time but the lingering impressions that shape our experience of city life.
Toronto born painter Brian Harvey studied at The Art Centre at Central Technical School, Toronto School of Art, and received a BFA from OCAD University in 2016. Upon graduating from The Art Centre in 2003, Harvey focused on building an oil painting practice and within a few years he began working full time as an artist. He has been painting for two decades and his work has been widely collected across Canada and beyond. He is inspired by the ommonplace and the typically mundane; the everyday objects, spaces and landscapes that surround him. He strives to explore and monumentalize these overlooked and forgotten pockets of daily life.