Paintings
I was interviewed on CBC radio about this series: (sorry this won't link, please copy and paste to listen)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-367-the-weekend-morning-show-manitoba/clip/15900346-painting-remix-in-search-justice-portage-la-prairie?onboarding=false&fbclid=IwAR2ITOOgF27Vq_6NurqaAy10zWPODGNmmvkrA1fo39bvVR7Kc9FqbNl4HFI |
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In 2018 I started making paintings of protests that I or my family attended. I think the protests are important and deserve to be recorded in paintings. Making art about issues that are meaningful to me is what keeps me going.
International Women's Day, 16"x20", acrylic, 2018, sold
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My daughter Katie took me to my first protest, an International Women's Day march in Winnipeg in 2015. In my paintings I was experimenting with having a brightly coloured gridded background at this time. Many marchers had dark clothing which I didn't enjoy painting so I colourized Winnipeg! I wanted to show the joy in activism.
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Clowns against Fascism, 20"x16", acrylic, 2018, sold
My niece Paula was attending an antifascist march at the University of Winnipeg in 2018 and invited me to join her. Some young women artists dressed up as clowns and carried one small sign "Clowns against Fascism". I thought it was so brilliant to make fun of the fascists, and the clowns were so bright and colourful that I immediately started a painting of them. Here again I was playing with a bright gridded background and intense shadows.
Take back the night, 16"x20", oil, 2018
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My niece Paula attended a Take Back the Night protest in Ottawa and the bright lights the organizers used inspired me to use a version of Precisionism for the background, altering it into geometric shapes. Showing the marchers from the back gives you a sense of being in the march yourself.
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Average student debt upon graduation is $40,000. 16"x20", acrylic, 2018
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My daughter Katie was a student politician at the University of Winnipeg and participated in a couple of tuition fee protests. I am incensed that our government has failed to financially support higher education, with the result that tuition fees have gone up regularly. Again in this painting I experimented with a limited palette and with a Precisionism inspired geometric background and foreground elements.
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CFS Protest at Parliament, 16"x20", acrylic, 2019
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My daughter Katie and her colleagues on student council at the University of Winnipeg went to Ottawa to protest tuition fees with the Canadian Federation of Students. Again I played with the background, showing the students blowing the roof off the Parliament buildings and steaming up the air with the power of their protest.
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Standing room only, 16"x20", oil, 2019
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Transit service in Winnipeg is problematic. There are not enough buses, buses are consequently overcrowded, busfare is ridiculously expensive, drivers are regularly harassed and assaulted. City council prioritizes cars over public transit. This is a climate disaster. This was my view from the back of a crowded bus I was on one day.
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They tried to hijack the Women's March. oil, 16" x 20", 2019
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I came across these young right wing protesters who had situated themselves right beside the Women's March, trying to hijack attention from it. I thought they were very interesting looking but I don't give painting space to causes I don't agree with, so I changed their right wing posters to lavender and pink and left their faces blank. I was experimenting with backgrounds again and made a sort of sarcastic spotlight background.
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Pride, oil, 16" x 20", 2019, sold
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We have a friend who is a refugee from Syria. He is gay and was persecuted in Turkey and several of his friends were murdered for being gay. He wanted to participate in the Gay Pride march in Winnipeg and we went with him to support him. This fabulous devil/angel was in the march and I had to paint them. Here I limited my palette and simplified the background to focus all the attention on the figures in the foreground. The couple with the baby were actually wearing red and black, just like Devil/Angel.
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Climate Strike, oil, 16" x 20", 2019.
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In the spring of 2018, inspired by Greta Thunberg, school children from all over Winnipeg came to the Manitoba Legislature to demand action on climate issues. Greta did not actually attend, but I put her in, wearing her yellow raincoat, to honour her activism. The younger kids were so excited to be there and they were so bright and colourful; they were beautiful. We live not far from the legislature and saw whole classrooms walking back to school with their teachers after the protest.
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Respect your Mother, oil, 16" x 20", 2020.
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In 2019, Mentoring Artists for Women's Art in Winnipeg, held a poster making workshop preceding a climate protest at the Legislature. These young Indigenous people attended to make their posters. I distorted the wooden floor to suggest the uncertain ground we all stand on thanks to climate change. The spoiled poster in the foreground suggests oil spills on Mother Earth.
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Homeless, oil, 16" x 20", 2020, sold
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There are more homeless people in Winnipeg every year and the pandemic has exacerbated it. This is a homeless man's tent in Winnipeg near Circle of Life Thunderbird House, in the middle of winter. Several tents and tent cities have burned as people struggle to stay warm with fires.
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The Wolseley Elm, 16" x 20", oil, 2020, sold
The Wolseley elm was a famous elm tree that used to stand in the middle of the street, in front of my grandparents' house on Wolseley Avenue in Winnipeg. It was in Ripley's Believe it or Not as the world's smallest park. The street went around the tree with an east bound lane on one side, and a west bound lane on the other. However, it was vandalized and the city came to cut it down. These ladies, who included my grandparents' neighbour Mrs. Borrowman, formed a protective circle around the tree and prevented it from being cut down. The house shown in the background is my grandparents' house. I worked from a black and white photo from the Winnipeg Tribune archives and researched 1950s colours for the ladies' clothes.
Stella's, 16"x20",oil, 2021
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A local restaurant, Stella's, was in the news for some problems involving alleged mistreatment of staff. Restaurant staff have a tough job and I wanted to show some of the problems. Family members helpfully modelled for me.
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Pinky, 16" x 20", oil, 2021, sold
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Substance abuse is a huge social problem that I wanted to make art about without pointing the finger at any individuals who may be struggling with it. I posed my old teddy, Pinky, with a bottle of wine and tylenol bottle to suggest some of the prices of substance abuse. Now I was playing with lighting and lit it with a candle and photographed it for my reference visual. This was exciting for me as it created old-fashioned dramatic lighting which is fun to paint.
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White Girl Privilege, 16" x 20", oil, 2021, sold
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I took part in a anti-racist workshop that encouraged everyone to examine their privilege. I thought about the time as a young woman when I had been drinking and smoking grass and got a flat tire on a Friday evening. When I saw the cops I thought it was all over, that I would be arrested or charged. Instead they changed my tire for me and told me to go home. An Indigenous friend was incredulous at my gentle treatment (not her experience). I experimented again with light, using a cone of yellow to suggest the streetlight and the darkness beyond.
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People are the economy, 16" x 20", oil, 2021
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My husband and I attended a "drive-through honkathon" protest against cuts to health care in Manitoba during the pandemic. This man and his child with his signs and his horn in front of the imposing steps of the legislature really appealed to me as an image.
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You'll die of old age; we'll die of climate change, 16"x20", oil, 2021, sold
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At climate change protests at the Manitoba legislature, I noticed that the younger children were happy and excited, while some older teenagers or young adults carried very serious or very pessimistic signs, such as the ones Zoe is carrying here. In this painting I experimented with painting background figures in paler hues so as to concentrate attention on the central figure.
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Lonely Vigil-Wet'suwet'un, 16"x20", oil, 2021, sold.
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In February 2020, about 25 young people occupied the Winnipeg office of the federal Minister of Northern Affairs, Dan Vandal, to demand that the RCMP leave indigenous Wet'suwet'un territory, where water protectors were trying to protect water from an Coastal Gas pipeline. My friend Lara Rae was taking food to the group and I drove her there. There was a mass of young people inside Vandal's office and these two were by the fire in the parking lot. I liked this image for the dramatic lighting and for how it shows that sometimes activism is cold and lonely and takes place in strange places.
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The End is Nigh, 16"x20", oil, 2021
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A climate protest can be a place to show your pessimism while also displaying your cartooning skills and dressing up in a mask that carries a powerful message. I liked the contrast between the frantic message of protester in front, and the obviously optimistic young dad with three young children in the background.
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Strike with a Bike, 16" x20", oil, 2021
Most protesters at climate protests are young people. This older man came on his heavy Dutch bicycle, well prepared for the protest with signs, a bouquet, and a newspaper article in his carrier. I experimented here with showing a sunny day by adding yellow to the ground to up the contrast to the shadow areas.
Leather Chaps, 16" x 20", oil, 2022, sold
My wonderful artist friend Irene Kuziw saw my Pride painting of Devil/Angel and encouraged me to make more Pride paintings. She supplied me with her photo albums and I found the reference photo I used for this image. I made the scene sunnier with yellow ground and purply blue shadows and subdued some figures with quiet colours to make the whole scene feel happy and easy to "read". I included the Winnipeg transit bus stop to situate the event in Winnipeg, and the Old Dutch potato chips for sale under the bright yellow umbrella to underline the sunny summer day feeling.
Memorial for Missing Indigenous Children, oil, 16 x 20, 2022
In 2021 unmarked graves were detected at the grounds of several former residential schools across Canada, mostly no doubt of Indigenous children who died there. Memorials were created across Canada at colonial sites. This one was on the steps of the Legislative Building in Victoria, BC. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called for "the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries".
Minimum Wage Diet, oil, 16 x 20, 2022
Poverty affects so many people. In my youth I lived for a year on a minimum wage. I couldn't afford much to eat. This was my diet. I know minimum wage diets today are even poorer. It is not sustainable today to try to live on a minimum wage.
Orange Tube, oil, 16" x 20", 2022
Gloria Booths, well-known Winnipeg Drag Queen, wore this fabulous outfit to a Pride party in 2003. My friend and well known queer artist Irene Kuziw, attended this event and let me use her photos as references. Gloria's glorious wig was fun to paint, laying down a soft hazy light yellow layer for the part of her hair the sun shines through, then building individual darker clumpy parts of the wig.
You can go no further, oil, 16" x 20", 2022
Early in 2022, Muskikiway Lynn Thompson sat on the road and thus stopped the Freedumb convoy from entering the Downtown East Side of Vancouver, a wretchedly poor area where many homeless people camp. A nine year old child who was with Lynn and her friend was bumped by one of the freedumb trucks. Lynn's friend Bambi took photos and allowed me to use them as references. I left the background identifiable as retail but otherwise vague, and concentrated strong colours and detail on Lynn and the truck to focus attention on Lynn, especially, as the hero of the painting.
