Patricia Gaines's newest work, a series of intricately constructed boxes, revisits familiar images from the history of art and recodes them for her own Surrealist inspired, spiritualist inclined, feminist oriented concerns. Introducing human hair into her multimedia images to startling effect, her work offers glimpses into a unique imagination that has been fertilized by travel to far away lands and distant cultures. The individual works transport the mind from Nova Scotia, where Gaines works for most of the year, to other possible places where a hybrid identity emerges, coalescing vital models of feminine beauty and power.

— David Moos | Curator, Contemporary Art | Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto