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Saint John Arts Centre Show

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Saint John Arts Centre 
 

May 8 – July 3, 2015

Artist’s Statement

In my mid fifties, as so many do, I faced a number of challenges and life-changing events, the most significant of which was the dissolution of my marriage.

The self portrait in this show, Stripped, is an expression of how it felt to be so utterly stripped down at that time.  The painting was a kind of self-therapy which helped me absorb what was happening, as was the almost involuntary decision to shave my head. When I finally decided to take off my wedding band I had to cut it because it would not come over the calloused knuckle.  The two pieces of the ring now hang from the stretcher below my ring finger.

Room for One, the interior painted at the same time, is an expression of the new reality of being on my own as well as my openness to including another at the centre of my life.

These years later, I am deeply grateful for the one with whom I now entrust my heart - it was very easy to make room for her. In planning for this exhibition my first decision was to include a portrait of RuthTaken together, these three pieces make a kind of soulful triptych of change and renewal. 

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Room for One (28x22)

Stripped

Stripped (38x45 oval)

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Ruth, Sleeping In. (36 x 24)

 

There is very little unique in my life - quite the opposite.  Most lives follow a similar trajectory.  In the first half of life we leave home, set goals and work toward them, find a life partner and raise a family, establish a career and focus on success.  Then, inevitably, and usually because of some trauma or failure for which we are quite unprepared, everything shifts. 

The years bracketed by that triptych have been for me a crossing over into later life with all the adjustments that has required. Within that time, as well as being remarried, I have retired, lost both parents and grieved the loss of a still-born first grandchild before the joy of four new arrivals. All of that has brought me to a new place.  There has been no physical move involved. The new place is interior; a state of mind and a renewed and deeper appreciation for old surroundings and the things that have been nearby all along.

As the broken pieces of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope shift and tumble to make a new and unexpectedly more beautiful pattern, so this new place is more than I could have hoped for. The paintings here are either an expression of that shift and tumble or a celebration of that new pattern.

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Morning at the Pond (30x30)

When I was a child visiting my grandparents there was a place in the lower field near the house where the ground was always wet. Even the horse-drawn mower would get bogged down so that Grandfather would have to mow there with a scythe.  When I decided to have a pond dug this was the obvious place to choose.  It is remarkable how, once you dig a hole and it fills with water, the frogs find it, the wild grasses seed themselves, and the ducks and herons drop in on their way through.  I transplanted some Water Lilly roots and, as you can see, they have done spectacularly well. It is a wonderfully peaceful place where I have spent long hours alone and which I now associate with healing.

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Among The Saints   (18  x24)

My mother died in March of 2011.  My father died just over a year later.  It was a long year for him. 

 

They were both cremated. After Mom died my brothers and sister and I decided we would wait until Dad was gone and bury their ashes together.  I used to think it was morbid when I learned that someone kept an urn in their home but, since I live in the house where my mother was born, it seemed right to bring her cremated remains to the place her life started.  So that is what I did and, for over a year, the urn containing her ashes stayed on a shelf in our living room - a daily reminder of her life and her presence among the saints.


After Dad’s funeral, the same shelf held the second urn until mid summer when family and friends gathered at the graveside for a brief committal.  Before taking them to the service I took some photos of the two urns at several places around my property, as one would photograph friends at the end of a special visit.

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Samuel   (6 ¼ X 6 ¼)

Samuel was stillborn.  Nevertheless, the hospital staff dressed the little body and gave his grieving parents some time with him.  Later on, the congregation of University Hill United Church in Vancouver held a memorial service for him.  It was a blessing to have such support.  Since then I have been amazed to hear from women of an earlier generation who had to leave the hospital without seeing their stillborn child and who were counseled to ‘try again’ without ever being given the opportunity to grieve openly.

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Optimism  (24 x 20)

What a gift it is to have the world around renewed through the eyes of a child.  This is my firstborn grandson, Elliot, exploring the property.  I fear for him, knowing the changes that are inescapably overtaking us. I am angered by the greedy corporate colonialism that controls our resources and cynical about the gutless and short-sighted governments that have neither the will nor the vision to change that reality. Yet I know that we all must set our cynicism aside when with grandchildren who are eager and open to all creation. 

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Their Days are Like Grass   (16 x 24)  

       

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.  ( from Psalm 103: 15-16)
 


I retired from ministry after thirty years with the United Church of Canada. The denomination, founded in 1925, was over eighty years old at the time and institutions, like people, have a lifespan. This is Stirling United Church in Tay Creek, New Brunswick, established long before the union that formed the United Church of Canada.  During my time with them I moved most of the congregation from the sanctuary to the graveyard that surrounds the church. Like so many rural churches across the country, it now stands empty.

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The End of the Portage  (24 x 30)

You are walking through the woods with a canoe on your back.  It is the shortest distance between lakes but it doesn’t seem short.  You don’t dare take your eyes off the ground because you have to choose your footing and step carefully.  Occasionally you stop, push on the gunnels to raise the bow a little so you can see ahead, while trying to shift the load on your shoulders because your neck is getting stiff and your back is aching. A deer fly lands on your face – worse than the black flies and mosquitoes because they take out chunks– but with the boat balanced on your back it is almost impossible to slap at it, and the fly dope you smeared on your face is ineffective because it is now running into your eyes along with the sweat.  How much farther?  You stop again, raise the front of the boat a little higher and you see it; the first glint of water through the trees…

As I talked with a colleague about our upcoming retirement he said it felt like he was having that first glimpse of water at the end of a long portage. I found the image so evocative that I immediately knew this would be my next painting.

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Holding On     (20 x 16)

The way that roots can anchor themselves in rock is a marvel.  It is easy to visualize the water scouring the bank below these roots in the spring freshets.  But the boulders this old spruce is gripping have been unmoved.  “Loves me like a rock”, “founded on a rock”, “rock of ages”; the origins of such images are no mystery.  Our lives are also rooted in those things that enable us to hold on through “Hell or high water”.

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Fighting Back  (24 x 18)

This is a section of well-worn trail along Fall Brook in the steep-sided gulley between the falls and the Southwest Miramichi. The many scuffing boots that follow the trail to that popular spot contribute to the work of erosion. It is also visible in the fallen trees that lose their rooted grip in the broken rock. Some of them, like this old yellow birch, slide over and then fight back to recover their upright stance as well as they can.

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Gram’s Brook  (20 x 16)

I learned from my mother that, as my grandfather built the house and before they had dug a well, my grandmother would carry water from a brook that ran through the edge of the cedar swamp just over the side-hill – a small tributary of Carson Brook, a little farther out. When I acquired the property the brook was no longer there.  It had been silted in and overtaken by the swamp.  One spring day, with water running everywhere, I took a shovel and began to dig a drainage ditch where the brook once flowed.  Over several years I dug a little more each spring and eventually the brook found its course once again. Now I keep it clear of the fallen branches and leaves that block its flow and there is enough spring activity in the swamp to keep it running most of the year.

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Along Trout Brook   (24 x 30)

Trout Brook runs into the Southwest Miramichi a mile or so down river from Fall Brook and on the other side of the valley.    Both brooks have spectacular waterfalls.  Fall Brook Falls is a short hike from the main river.  Getting to Trout Brook Falls is more of a challenge; no trail here.  It is a longer walk and requires wading the brook several times in the places it runs against the steep rock faces in the narrow valley – unless you want to do a lot of climbing.  This is just below one of the spots where you have to take to the water again.

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Lakeshore Totem  (16 x 24)

I spent a very pleasant summer afternoon paddling on Meduxnekeg Lake near Houlton Maine while visiting with my brother.  There was not a breath of wind that day and the mirror images of the boulders around the shoreline were suggestive of horizontal totem poles.

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New Brunswick Ditch   (16 x 24)

This is one of the delights of summer and a reason to take your time as you drive on our country roads.  In my books, no well-tended flower garden is any more beautiful than this wild and glorious tangle.

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Snowy Evening in the Studio    (22 x 28)

Winter is my most productive time in the studio – there are too many distractions around the place in the long days of summer. This evening I had come to the house to make myself a sandwich and this is what I saw when I looked out the kitchen window.

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View from the Studio Window    (24 x 24)

From April to November I rarely see deer on our property but, with the first snow, they move in and for much of the winter I see them daily.  A large window at the north side of my studio looks into the woods and it always delights me when I turn from my easel and see them. I am sure they can see me but, so long as I move slowly, any movement I make inside does not alarm them. In the late afternoon they often settle for the night on a knoll across the brook and if I shine a flashlight into the woods as I leave the studio after dark I will see their shining eyes.  Feeding deer is discouraged and, in the past, I haven’t done it but the last two winters have been unusually long with very deep snow well into the spring so I have fed them for the first time to help them through the last of the hard weather.

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Snow-Laden Grove and Rail Fence    (24 x 20)

Despite the amounts we have had these last couple of winters, I always appreciate the beauty of the world outside under new snow – especially on a bright morning. 

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After the First Snowfall    (48 x 60)

There always comes a time late in the fall when the leaves are stripped from the trees and the ground is bare and frozen.  It is for me a season of mourning. Everything looks dead and the greens of summer and the bright colours of fall are fast-fading memories.  That is when I dread the coming of winter.  But when the first snow comes like this, transforming a bleak landscape, the arrival of the season is suddenly welcome.

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The Studio at Dusk   (20 x 28)

This is the second painting I have done of the studio in winter – this one in early December.  Why would I not want to capture and celebrate a moment like this?  I am so grateful that I am finally getting to the retirement I had planned for and feel so privileged to live in such a place.

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Grackles in a Sugar Snow     (16 x 20)

We make some maple syrup every spring, boiling down in a huge and ancient cast iron cauldron.  It is a wonderful way to hurry up the coming of the season.  It is during this time that the flocks of grackles return and that we get at least a couple of vigorous spring snow storms – sugar snow.

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Spring Flock over Ploughed Ground    (36 x 60)

Am I just getting older or are the winters getting longer and colder?  Whatever the case, spring is getting more and more welcome with every passing year.  It is such a relief to feel the sun on your back and see the snow melting and smell the earth warming and hear the wonderful sounds of returning birds.  If there was a sound track to this painting it would be the squawking of grackles and redwing blackbirds and the rush of many wings.

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