ABOUT
“Water is the starting point for each of Musgrave’s works. With a blank canvas placed on the floor of her studio, she selects objects of significance: of sentimental, aesthetic, or symbolic meaning, to place on top of the canvas. She sprinkles, sprays, or pours water over the object to capture an impression of the form in pigment. The impression made by the water is like a memory of the object on the canvas.
Using water in the process is as important to Deanna as her subject matter. Her world view is closely tied to the power of water and its relationship to experience and memory. Deanna’s work considers and articulates the theories of homeopathy: the ability of water to remember substances once mixed in it; cymatics: the patterns formed when a substance like water or sand is vibrated; and akashic field theory: the theory that information can exist and be transmitted through energy fields.
The result is a highly dynamic and fluid expression of memory, story, and a deep connection to water. Outside of her art, Deanna studies and practices dowsing: practiced since the 15th century to locate underground water systems. More recently dowsing has been adapted to locate areas of stress or trauma on the human body as a means of healing.
All aspects of Deanna’s connection to water speak to a single idea: that information, knowledge, and experience can exist and be transmitted in many different ways. She believes that revolution can be ignited from person to person and that can happen in many different forms.”
~Donna Wawzonek, "Deanna Musgrave: Stirring Large Conversations with Grande Impressions," National Water Centre Blog
“Water is a dominant aspect in Deanna’s more recent work. The colour blue and energetic flowing brush strokes are readily seen in work such as Tropos (2011/19), Cloud (2015), and Diversity (2021) – all large works – and suggests a strong undercurrent that pulls the viewer in and along. In many spiritual practices water is an important image, denoting cleansing and purification, reflection and meditation, a suggestion of transformational moments. The lyricism of the Transcendence piece in its graceful movement from deep darkness to the brilliant lightness and in its powerful flowing movement could ignite in the viewer a belief that enlightened transformation can happen.”
~Nida Doherty, “Transcendence: Deanna Musgrave,” Centred.ca, Art Reviews, October 30, 2022
"Often working on the studio floor, using liquid paints to surround, unify and pool around areas of information, Musgrave succeeds in defying a traditional concept of perspective. Her compositions unfold almost three-dimensionally, enveloping the viewer with information from above, straight on and below."
~Stephanie Buhmann, "New Brunswick Studio Conversations," Billie Magazine V.2, Spring 2017
“For visual artist Deanna Musgrave, art and healing are interwoven. This is why transformation is the crux of her work and the reason she found home in Saint John, [New Brunswick], a historic working-class city on the Bay of Fundy. This place possesses energy she describes as having “an ancient quality that brings together polarity.” It is polarities that inhabit Deanna’s vision. Her work is an interaction that seeks unity, exuding energy in the process, much like the current transformative renaissance happening here in the old port city.”
~Shannon Webb-Campbell, “Arts Higher State: The Vision and Practice of Deanna Musgrave, Created Here Magazine: Psyche, Volume 11, 2020.
“…in that moment I felt a mysterious force pulling me back--- encountering Musgrave’s show [“Channel”] in Sussex marked the beginning of something. A transition.”
~Kara Au, “Deanna Musgrave’s Transcendence”, Visual Arts News, Fall 2022, pg. 2 -
Biography:
“Musgrave’s work has been a fixture in the Saint John and New Brunswick art community for over a decade. Her paintings are immediately recognizable; ethereal and vibrant, they encapsulate traits that many artists struggle to balance. They are objectively beautiful yet wrought with complex symbolism and capture a narrative while remaining vehemently abstract.”
~Christiana Myers, “Peer Review: The Best Art of 2018,” The East, December 2018
Deanna Musgrave is best known for her monumental paintings and public artwork such as, “Cloud” (2015) which is part of the permanent collection of the University of New Brunswick (Saint John). It is displayed at the Hans Klohn Commons and measures 10’ high and 56’ long. Her work “Tropos” (2011/19), which measures 8’ high and 48’ long, found a permanent home at the University of New Brunswick’s (Fredericton) new Kinesiology building.
Early on in her career, she was selected by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2007 for the Studio Watch Award which aimed at introducing promising new artists to the public. She was later included in multiple Beaverbrook Art Gallery exhibits including “Off the Grid: Abstract Art in New Brunswick” in 2014, “Materiality and Perception” in 2019 and she was selected to be the first artist to fill the entire green wall of the Elizabeth Curry Gallery (Beaverbrook Art Gallery) with her work “Transcendence” in 2022.
Her work has been enthusiastically reviewed by the New Brunswick media, and she has won numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, New Brunswick Arts Board, Mount Allison University and the University of New Brunswick.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University (2005) and a Master of Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of New Brunswick (2019) where she delivered her thesis titled “Connecting Crossmodal Interactions in Visual Music to Create ‘Mindful’ Experiences.” She is also a graduate of the Orca Institute’s Counselling Skills Diploma Program (2024). She utilizes her background in mindfulness, wellness and art when she visits schools across New Brunswick to guide students to experience a variety of the province’s artists through the work in CollectionARTNB.
She is based out of Menagoesg (Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada).
Quotes:
Donna Wawzonek, "Deanna Musgrave: Stirring Large Conversations with Grande Impressions," National Water Centre Blog
Nida Doherty, “Transcendence: Deanna Musgrave,” Centred.ca, Art Reviews, October 30, 2022
Stephanie Buhmann, "New Brunswick Studio Conversations," Billie Magazine V.2, Spring 2017
Shannon Webb-Campbell, “Arts Higher State: The Vision and Practice of Deanna Musgrave, Created Here Magazine: Psyche, Volume 11, 2020.
Kara Au, “Deanna Musgrave’s Transcendence”, Visual Arts News, Fall 2022, pg. 2 -4.
Christiana Myers, “Peer Review: The Best Art of 2018,” The East, December 2018