Christine Klassen Gallery is proud to present Ongoing Enchantment, a new exhibition of paintings by Canadian artist Ronald Boaks. This latest body of work, created over the past five years, represents a culmination of Boaks’ search for balance, beauty, and meaning—anchored in personal history and spiritual exploration.
Born in Newmarket, Ontario, Boaks has been exhibiting for more than 30 years. He is best known for his bold, expressive canvases that celebrate colour and surface as much as they reflect his ongoing quest for harmony. His work is rooted in personal memory and experience; for Boaks, art-making has always been a road to self-discovery, drawing strength from the richness of the past.
With Ongoing Enchantment, Boaks embraces both Modernist and Romantic sensibilities, acknowledging also a spiritual inclination. Many works are painted over earlier canvases, allowing traces of history to remain visible.
Across the series, recurring motifs emerge as a part of Boaks' visual library:
-
Female forms and torsos – an homage to the beauty and resilience of the feminine.
-
Ladders – symbols of aspiration and the human drive toward knowledge and beauty.
-
X’s, Y’s, and Z’s – Cartesian markers that ground us in a three-dimensional world; two X’s appear in works with female figures, referencing female chromosomes.
-
The horizontal line and the cloud – evolving from an earlier “vessel with three clouds,” the cloud has become a singular, minimal white form. For Boaks, this symbol deepened after the passing of his mother and his partner’s mother, when he felt their spirits had been freed. The cloud now embodies transcendence, lightness, and the possibility of change.
-
Collaged fragments – carefully arranged to heighten tension and movement, keeping the eye alive across the surface.
Ongoing Enchantment stands in contrast to overt expressionism. Here, the paint is “caressed or tickled across the surface, somewhat calligraphically,” resulting in works that feel at once lyrical and precise. Romantic imagery—hearts, lily pads, clouds—intersects with Modernist structures and geometric notations. Works such as Full Moon Thrall balance expressionistic centers with surrounding measured forms, uniting passion and restraint.
Through all of his work, Ronald Boaks reveals himself as an artist seeking equilibrium between modernity and romance, intellect and emotion, structure and spirit. Ongoing Enchantment offers viewers a meditation on memory, transcendence, and the enduring beauty of being alive right now.
