News
Covid-19 has changed all our lives. I am thankful that I have remained well, but long to return to normal activities like visiting with friends and family, and travelling for art and pleasure.
While self-isolating in Port Hope I have been working in my studio daily. In 2020 I produced Other Echoes, a collection of works on paper examining home and memory.
Early in 2021 I completed the Canadian part of The Tangled Garden a large, long-term garden wall project. Hopefully in the future I will have the opportunity to travel and develop the imagined two remaining walls.
My annual summer canoe trip with the other artists of the Gibson Girls, was cancelled and our exhibition in Vilnius, Lithuania was postponed until 2022. The mail art exchange project we were to exhibit, Where I'm at Now: A Conversation in Art has continued and provided some solace and connection. Go to our newly launched website gibsongirlsart.com to see the growing collection of collaborative postcards created by the group. Follow our activities and the project on instagram @5gibsongirls.
News
Covid-19 has changed all our lives. I am thankful that I have remained well, but long to return to normal activities like visiting with friends and family, and travelling for art and pleasure.
While self-isolating in Port Hope I have been working in my studio daily. In 2020 I produced Other Echoes, a collection of works on paper examining home and memory.
Early in 2021 I completed the Canadian part of The Tangled Garden a large, long-term garden wall project. Hopefully in the future I will have the opportunity to travel and develop the imagined two remaining walls.
My annual summer canoe trip with the other artists of the Gibson Girls, was cancelled and our exhibition in Vilnius, Lithuania was postponed until 2022. The mail art exchange project we were to exhibit, Where I'm at Now: A Conversation in Art has continued and provided some solace and connection. Go to our newly launched website gibsongirlsart.com to see the growing collection of collaborative postcards created by the group. Follow our activities and the project on instagram @5gibsongirls.
News
Covid-19 has changed all our lives. I am thankful that I have remained well, but long to return to normal activities like visiting with friends and family, and travelling for art and pleasure.
While self-isolating in Port Hope I have been working in my studio daily. In 2020 I produced Other Echoes, a collection of works on paper examining home and memory.
Early in 2021 I completed the Canadian part of The Tangled Garden a large, long-term garden wall project. Hopefully in the future I will have the opportunity to travel and develop the imagined two remaining walls.
My annual summer canoe trip with the other artists of the Gibson Girls, was cancelled and our exhibition in Vilnius, Lithuania was postponed until 2022. The mail art exchange project we were to exhibit, Where I'm at Now: A Conversation in Art has continued and provided some solace and connection. Go to our newly launched website gibsongirlsart.com to see the growing collection of collaborative postcards created by the group. Follow our activities and the project on instagram @5gibsongirls.
Garden History
Every garden is a replica, a representation, an attempt to recapture something.
Robert Harbison Eccentric Spaces
After Parkinson
In this series of small mixed media images I returned again to my battered reprint of John Parkinson’s 1629 Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (Park-in-Sun’s Earthly Paradise). One of the first western garden manuals, Parkinson collected woodcuts of a thousand known plants found in England at the time organizing them by “The Place, The Time, The Names, The Virtues” of each. Many of these plants were brought from North America and many others later introduced here.
My walking and study merged in recognitions of local wild plants within Parkinson's garden manual. My relationship to the place, the time, the names, and the virtues of our present paradise remains for me a constant concern.
All images are mixed media: litho, acrylic and ink. 18x13-19x14 cm $125.00
Garden History
Escape
The drawings in Escape and Wilder were inspired by John Parkinson’s1629 Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris, one of the first garden manuals printed in England. Where Parkinson's collected woodcuts organize the name, the place, the time and the virtues of native and newly introduced specimens, my images layer what is familiar, recognizing them as escapes naturalized in Canadian fields. Colour, as well as historic stencilled, suggest the growth and form of the plants amplifying the familiar identification, but also placing it within the domestic sphere. Beeswax, a final layer, evokes a further mnemonic with the aroma of honey that emanates from the work.
Escape All images 76x102cm, mixed print media on washi, acrylic, oil and beeswax mounted on panel. $1800