It is said that, “A
picture is worth a thousand words.”
And as we gaze at a
painting in an art gallery,
or marvel at a
dramatic red sun setting over the horizon,
or being mesmerized
by the grandeur of a mountain scape,
or becoming saturated
with love of a beauteous garden,
or filled with wonder
of a mourning dove's egg hatching a wee baby,
CONNECTIONS ARE BEING
MADE WITHIN OUR SOULS.
Artists Highlight
Nature, Spirituality and the Environment
in James Street North
Exhibition.
Regina Haggo, art
historian, public speaker, curator and
former professor at
the University of Canterbury in New Zealand
teaches at the Dundas
Valley School of Art.
Recently, she was featured in a Spectator article...the
following are excerpts from her review.
“I believe that artists are often the ones who create connections with
things that others might not,” says Lisa Pijuan-Nomur. She's an artist but she's also the driving
force behind the exhibitions at Hamilton's James Street North Studio. “Artists often have heightened connections
with their environment ~ with nature, with spirituality ~ connections with the
world around them and with others,” she comments.
Ralph Heather's Old Meets
New, a striking black and white woodcut, joins past with the present. “I had stopped about 30 minutes northwest of
Hamilton to look at the Mennonite School which was going about its daily
routine, a wonderful rolling field behind it and of course, no cars,” he tells
me. “As I focused on this subject
matter, I suddenly noticed the industrial farm right beside it...and I started
to see a story that I could tell.” He focused on a rural landscape,
interspersed with large trees and buildings. A horse and buggy in the left
foreground and a tractor pulling a plow in the distance represent past and
present. Heather commented, “The obvious story is two different ways of life coming together and
finding a way to co-exist. A little
white fence on the left separates the two.
So insignificant, the fence was more of an understanding between the
two...rather than a barrier.”
A bridge in Helga Morrison's Fluvius
II unites past, present and future.
“The metaphorical meanings held by bridges, I contemplated,” Morrison
says, “as a link, a connection and as a
transition from past to future...where standing on the bridge is the
present” The painting's surface is
highly textured by mixing sand into acrylic paint. She paints a series of stark
horizontals. The snow covered land in
the foreground anticipates, in its swirls and stains, the patterns of the
bigger sky area. White, pastels of blue,
green and yellow enliven the sky. Dark red strands suggest a river cutting the
composition in two. The curve of the
bridge on the right echoes those of the river bank and hills in the distance...visually
connecting the human-built-structure with the shapes of nature.
John Kinsella uses a centrally
placed tree and its reflections to link water, land and sky in August
Field, Prince Edward County. The
tree's undulating reflection in the water draws us in. Rooted in the field
among cylindrical hay rolls, the tree, a vertical shape, connects the disparate
horizontals found in wooded hills and the sinuous strips of colour in the
sky.
Other artistic works
can be seen at the Studio in this March exhibition.
The Water's Edge
A large picture by Carolyn Dover,
which captured my attention, advertised a showing of her works at Earls Court
Gallery (Hamilton) from March 20 to April 26.
The painting was reminiscent of views I'd often seen of marshland ponds
in North Burlington...so peaceful, serene,
calming in its reflection of woodland, colour shrubs and foreground lily
pads. Drawn into the picture, it took me
back in time, creating a path to the future.
Messages from these
artists relate wonderfully to Life!
When a man moves
away from nature, his heart becomes hardened.
(Lakota ~ Native
American Indian)
Humans have an amazing capacity
for not ALWAYS seeing what's there, at times, ever redefining facts that fit
preconceived ideas. Take the case of the
“missing caribou” that roam the Barrenlands of the central and eastern
Arctic. In 2009, the herd, last
estimated in 1993 at 276,000 animals, had seemingly vanished with
so-called-experts citing causes ranging from...”over-hunting” to...”the impact
of climate”...and to “possible change of habitat.”
Aboriginal
communities, who are spiritually connected with nature,
simply stated, “The
caribou just moved further north.”
Words of Wisdom
A man should hear
a little music, read a little poetry
and see a fine picture
or piece of art every day...in order that
worldly cares may
not obliterate the sense of the beautiful
which God has
implanted in the human soul.
(Author unknown)
Merle
Baird-Kerr...compiled March 16, 2014
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