“Silvery Tones”, is a contemporary look at the pre-impressionist painter Camille Corot. The exhibition is accompanied by an essay Souvenir of Corot: Views, Veils, and Silvery Tones written by Dr. Geoffrey Carr. Dr. Carr teaches art, architecture, and film at University of the Fraser Valley, University of British Columbia, and Emily Carr University,

Friesen became interested in Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot while visiting the Frick collection in New York for the first time. The piece that intrigued him was “The Lake”, a large scale landscape Corot painted in 1861. This period of Corot’s work resonates with how Friesen sees painting operating today, the traces of creation with an obvious brushstroke produced at essentially a human scale.

Friesen writes “I see this work as being produced in a transitional period where there are obvious impressionistic devices, such as vibrant flecks of paint applied to a style still rooted in the safety of tradition. The pictorial devices Corot uses allows abstract licks of paint to exist in a structured environment that push and pull our notions of what painting is and what painting has the potential to do. ‘Silvery Tones’ is an investigation into how we understand that process in a contemporary way.”