Matrixes
Matrix Defined (plural: matrixes or matrices):
Something within or from which something else originates, develops, or takes form
Matrixes is a series of multi-media artworks illustrating the early lives of my parents in Scotland, what drove each of them separately to seek passage to Canada, and how a love of the arts brought them together. Comprised of collages of hand-tinted, sepia-toned photographs, letters, old notebooks, and other ephemera; wire and metal sculptural pieces; conte or charcoal drawings and script on acrylic painted wooden panels. Painted either ultramarine blue and ivory black or orange and purple, the colours speak to my parent’s ocean passages and life in the early 1960s in Toronto respectfully. Each artwork is a snapshot in time, reflecting rare glimpses into complex personal narratives, caught through snatches of dialogue, oral history, or in the interpretation of the items they left behind at their passing. It is about a union from which originated two new generations of artists.
Panel 1: ‘Another’s World.’
‘Another’s World,’ is a multi-media artwork in which I collaged, hand-tinted, sepia-toned photographs, family letters, and my father’s writings to speak to how my father, as a young man, felt both haunted and torn, by a dominant father and familial expectations. His image is hardly visible amongst those of his father in his naval uniform; is set apart from those of his mother and brother; and is situated under the arches of the university he was expected to attend as a medical student. Inspired by the artist Jean-Michael Basquiat, I added snippets of writing and drawings of buildings in conte to situate the viewer in my father’s childhood city of Glasgow and to give a sense of his inner battles. The rusted metal work, against a backdrop of ultramarine blue paint, speaks to my father’s safe passage to a new life in Canada.
Panel 2: ‘Post- Scripts.’
‘Post- Scripts’ speaks to my father’s time with the Hudson’s Bay Company in the late 1950s. He crossed the ocean from Southampton, England to Montreal, Canada and had the choice of getting off at Montreal or going on to Yellowknife. He chose the former. I grew up fascinated by his stories of working and living among the Cree and Algonquin peoples. To relay the essence of his lived experience and these narratives, I created collages using replicas of the company’s guides, his correspondence with friends, his own writings and paintings and photos others took of him in the outdoors. They are layered upon an acrylic-painted wooden board which, in turn, is layered with pieces of cork flooring, one of my original woodcuts, and a piece of rusted metalwork. The latter two items both providing both a reference to a life in which travel is undertaken primarily by water and the other panels in this series.
Panel 3: ‘Celtic Knots’ and Panel #4: ‘Artistic Nascence’
‘Celtic Knots’ and ‘Artistic Nascence’ are designed to be viewed jointly. Deep ultramarine acrylic painted panels speak to a life lived primarily along the coast of Scotland and her journeys by boat to Canada, both for a visit at fifteen and to emigrate to Canada at twenty. One photographic collage speaks to her as older sister, one of five siblings, and member of extended family. Others hint at travels she made abroad which instilled in her a dream of living elsewhere. As referenced in the script written in conte, art was in my mother’s background and in her blood. The importance of art in her life is emphasized in my building of a separate but attached wooden panel. The panel is designed to give the feeling of being able to look through the windows of the Glasgow School of Art with the wire sculptures giving reference to the school’s architect Charles Rennie McIntosh and the layered tissue hiding the photos behind. The collage beneath is a composite her art awards and certificates and sepia-toned, hand-coloured photos of her being featured in local newspapers, or with her art school friends. Once again, the metal work imagery speaks to a journey across an ocean and hints at a future with my father.
Panel 5: ‘Convergence’
‘Convergence,’ uses colour and imagery to evoke the feeling of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. My mother’s detailed drawings of the city’s old homes provide a backdrop against which may be seen references to events that both led my parents to that city, the lives they lived before they met, and what brought them together in the form of a multi-media collage. If you look closely, you may find the plane ticket that took my father from the Hudson’s Bay Post to Toronto, the poetry he wrote and correspondence with his friend poet Gwendolyn MacEwen. My mother poses in an enlarged, black and white photo in front of the Pascal Gallery with one of her early prints in the window while around her are sepia-toned ephemera of an artist’s life and a reference to the book ‘Ulysses,’ that brought them together. The connection between past and present generations is made with the inclusion of several of my own linocut prints of my father playing the recorder based on a sketch my mother made when they first lived together.
