Time, Transformation and Techniques

Interview by Pamela Edmonds January 2008

Q. My first question to you has to do with the title of this specific exhibition at the AGP and the theme of alchemy. Alchemy is commonly understood as being an outmoded branch of science, which was concerned with trying to make gold out of base elements, such as lead, through chemical transformation. The term implies the creation of something valuable from something that is not. In actuality, alchemy is quite a complex and multifaceted tradition, related to a myriad of disciplines including metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics mysticism, spiritualism and art. It refers to both an early from of the investigation of nature and is defined differently depending on the area of the world it has been practiced or discussed, which includes Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Japan, Korea and China to name a few. How does your work specifically relate to the concept of alchemy and to the themes you explore as an artist?

A. Alchemy is a richly imbued word, conjuring up images of wizardly figures bent over bubbling braziers. Really, every artist is an alchemist of sorts creating ingenious works from very base materials such as paper, canvas, pigments, clay etc. The title of this exhibit was immediately inspiring – producing immediately two pieces – “The Alchemy of Remains I & II”. Alchemy can be implied variously in my work, encompassing a number of the disciplines you’ve noted, I think. For instance, there is the whole alchemy of creating a painting out of beeswax, dammar crystals and dry pigments, something perfected during the ancient Greek civilization. Then there is the physical interaction of me, the artist and the medium, encaustic – a very absorbing way of painting because of the nature of the medium which changes from fluid to solid but can revert to fluid again (alchemical transformation to a degree) depending on my manipulation. For this show I have centered on three different geographic areas: the Canadian Arctic, the Chilean Atacama Desert and the Alhambra in Spain. All three offer a unique spiritual energy, a different romance of the landscape and I am attempting to portray the impact each place continues to have on me.

Q. In your artist statement on your website you explain that your art embraces the “dynamics of how we define and perceive reality experienced long a continuum of past-present-future. The medium, encaustic, allows me to play with translucent layers and thus create a constant shifting of form within the painting just as scenes and sounds constantly flow in and out of our physical psychic awareness of the world around us” You have been working in the ancient tradition of encaustic painting for the past ten years quite successfully and have taught this art form for many years. Can you explain why you have been attracted to the medium and how you create your mixed-media works using this specific technique?

A. I don’t know why this was so impressionable but we were shown a video of Jasper Johns during my Concordia years wherein he was painting his “Flag” series using encaustic. All I remember is being blown away but the luscious red and fluidity of the paint as he pulled a huge brush down the canvas, and I made a resolution to paint in encaustic one day. The medium emerged in the 1990’s when I met an American artist who was experimenting with a sort of encaustic, I experimented myself with highly questionable formula until I had the luck of connecting with Richard Frumess and his gang at R&F paints in Kingston, New York. I took a three day workshop (one of three eventual trips) and had a complete epiphany and haven’t looked back since. There is an almost human interaction with the medium – it connects to you in a very tactile, visceral way – it leads you to new inspirations, new inventions. It is also friendly, if you don’t like what is going on, the whole thing can be melted down and stated again. It is very immediate – which is the reason Johns started to re-introduce it – at the time there were only slow drying mediums for him to use and they were too slow to keep up with the fury of his creativity. You, as a curator would not be overly pleased to know this, but I can work up to an hour before installation if I want, not that I’m going to!

My plaster pieces are my invention, influenced somewhat by the plaster sculptures of Manuel Neri, but also the installations of artists such as Irene Whittome and the photo monuments of a very strong mentor, Susanne Swibold. Encaustic allows me to use printmaking elements such as the etched line, graphic drawing as an underpainting, sculptural elements of combining various materials to create a whole and obviously, photographic elements. The colours available to me are the most luminous ever; just starting the day with melting a particular colour on my hotplate is an indescribably inspiring act. When I am teaching, it is the most exhilarating moment to melt a rally electric colour and hear the “oohs and aahs” from the students. There is absolutely nothing like painting with encaustic for me, period.

Q. You also mention the notion of a time and temporality as important elements in your works. When I look at your works, I am reminded of fossils of preserved remnants of earth and of embedded elements that can teach us about evolution. Can you explain how your work relates to time continuums?

A. In my very surface understanding, the time and reality continuum as defined by modern physics/metaphysics is fascinating – the concept of several realities occurring at the same time is an element I play with in my compositions. Also, there is the theory of hermeneutics – the concept that energies of one’s before remain in things and places they have left – the alchemy perhaps of fusing past and present by objects remaining. With my years living and working among various Indigenous Peoples and from my thesis research, I am very cognizant of a spiritual perception which allows a connection of the mystical and earthly realities of which I myself strongly embrace.

To repeat myself, photography and darkroom work instilled a strong sense of the elasticity of time. However, even as a child, I was always fascinated with historic places, the past presented in the present. Places like Upper Canada Village in Ontario and Williamsburg Virginia, held an allure for me – seeing characters from the 17—‘s for example, walking around and interacting with the contemporary crowd, seeing someone’s arrested needlepoint or a store left intact was like opening a diary. To some extent, my works are loose collections of past stories, memories of things past for the present and future.

Developing black and white photography also is a significant contributor to my perception of time frames. Darkroom work is alchemy again – you would be working in the dark under a ghostly light, beaming a negative image onto a blank photo paper – transforming a negative image to a positive one – but still invisible – then submerged, the paper began to reveal an image of a moment caught/frozen in time. I have just started some new works which incorporate photo images taken by my father in the 30’s and 40’s of our family homestead in Saskatchewan, in Flin Flon where he worked – rich historic remnants of a youth and of a heritage – one era brought into another to continue into the future, at the risk of exaggeration or “floweriness”!

Q. You studied Fine Art and Art Education at Concordia University in Montreal in the 1970’s with notable Canadian artists Yves Gaucher, Irene Whittome and Patrick Landsley, each professor influencing the direction of your work in different ways. In the 1980’s you moved to Peterborough and studied historic First Nations Quillwork as part of graduate studies in anthropology and art history at Trent University. Can you explain your academic interests and influences and how they relate to your current work?

A. Patrick Landsley etched a rock solid sensibility of graphic balance within a composition, for years I was in love with the power of graphite under drawings much like a graphite drawing. Gaucher instilled sensitivity to the exactness of choosing the absolute perfect balance of hue to hue. How many times I was sent back to re-think my colour balance in any said silkscreen until he deemed it perfect, I can’t begin to count! Irene Whittome’s enigmatic installations in the 70’s impressed upon me the metaphysical power of sculptures using found objects.

Of course, Rauschenberg, Twombly, the Dadaists, Miro are some major players who I would consider strong inspirations as well as contemporaries such as Aganetha Dyck (whom I admire for her ingenious co-operations with the actual beings which create beeswax in the first place), Manuel Neri, Rene Pierre Allain and more. There’s not enough time to flip through my art books/notes to name everyone here. Essentially, I am interested in artists who push the envelope by using unorthodox materials & ideas to create masterpieces.

As for my studies, my thesis research of Athapaskan quill worked belts was another epiphany. I chose to study their creative past after teaching in that area and becoming curious about what their early creative expressions were before the advent of the tourist moccasins. There’s too much to relate here, but briefly, their whole world view – spiritual and every day – was expressed in the belts woven by the Athapaskan women – again an expression of time – space continuum as perceived through Indigenous eyes.

Q. In our contemporary world, there is a marked awareness of issues surrounding the environment and the climate crisis through global warming. The sacredness and severity of nature and the natural environment has long been a subject at the forefront of Canadian art as presented through the genre of landscape. Similar to the historic Group of Seven painters, your work conveys a barrenness and solitude in the landscape, of a world devoid of human life. You have traveled to various sites, notably Asia, South America, the Arctic, visiting and photographing ghost-towns and architectural ruins as well lands made inhospitable to human settlement through climate extremes, such as desert and tundras. What is the relationship of your art to the environment? Do you think your works have a moral implication to bring awareness to the earth’s fragile state to a wider community? What are you looking to communicate through your art?

A. I have chosen three sites: a heritage site which is visited by thousands yearly – Alhambra, and romantic in its grandeur and decay; a desert which contains ghost towns and mysterious glyphs of an ancient culture; an Inuit settlement in the Arctic – fusing an ancient nomadic culture with a modern consumer one. A lot of what these works present is the temporality of existence and the fact the when our presence disappears in one area, the Earth reclaims what we have infiltrated. I don’t think the Earth is all that fragile, although I’m very aware of the disappearance of species and saddened by the daily evaporation of free and open land.

Not one to rant, I do however feel strongly about being more connected to the spirituality of the landscape – to revere the very rocks much like the elders did in Miriam’s essay. I read an interesting quote in the paper somewhere a few days ago from an Athapaskan elder who stated that once a long time ago, the Caribou and the People were able to talk. I think that if my art inspires people to “talk” more intimately with the world surrounding us that would be almost too much to expect.

Thank you Susan, I appreciate your thoughtful responses

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