Each of the pieces I chose to be featured in my AR gallery have ties to the following themes that inspire my art: connection, communication, community, cycles, (nature) conservation.

Forest Lungs – Watercolour 6x8 inches. Autumn, 2022

I painted this iteration of Forest Lungs in October 2022. An earlier draft emerged in Spring 2021, as a response to several things occurring simultaneously. Firstly, we were closing in on over a year of living with the COVID 19 respiratory virus, and of course this changed the world in considerable ways; in how we thought about breath and how we shared space with each other in more thoughtful ways (masking, observing some social distance). Certainly, we became aware of breathing, coughing, singing and communicating in very new ways. 

During lock-down, and working remotely, I began to spend a lot of time in a small woodlot near my home in North Waterloo. I’ve always enjoyed nature to a normal extent, but during the first year of the pandemic, my time spent in the woods became habitual and transformative. Many years living with anxiety and panic attacks, I became aware of how my breath deepened and slowed as I lost myself for stretches of time wandering and exploring and noticing minute changes as late winter unraveled into spring. I’d found my place, the woods restored my breath

Later that summer, I would read the book Forest Bathing by Dr Qing Li and learn of the many vital physical and psychological benefits of slowly and mindfully taking in the sights, sounds and smells of forests. 

Forest Lungs is my ode to finding healing in the woods amidst a pandemic.

Crone Season – Watercolour and ink, 6x8 inches. Autumn, 2022

Crone Season is the second of my uterus/fallopian tubes/ovary paintings. This painting acknowledges cycles, seasons, fertility, harvest. Endings and beginnings and endings. Each spoke of the wheel of the year is essential to continue the momentum

“Crone” was historically used as a pejorative term to insult older women, women who might have been feared, women who were ‘unpleasant’ and deemed no longer of use, due to their infertility. Until relatively recently, was rare for a woman to outlive her reproductive years, so little was known of what we now understand as perimenopause and menopause. 

Today we still fear and revile age, and particularly dread a perceived loss of beauty and vitality. We go to extremes to fight a losing battle against the inevitability of time. We speak in hushed tones - or not at all - of hot flashes, dryness, mood swings and missed cycles.

Crone Season is a reclamation. It’s a resistance to the idea that any season or stage is less worthy than another of celebration.

Fruiting Body – Watercolour, 6x8, Autumn 2022

I’ve always been enamored by mushrooms and have been sketching and painting them for decades. Fungi are neither plant nor animal but share similar sequences of development and reproduction. The most recognizable, but temporal, part of the fungal life cycle is the mushroom fruiting body. Spores are released from the pores, gills or by other natural transmission (insects, birds). The spores, like seeds, are locally transported, which ensures the continuity of the fungal community. 

Mycelia are the network of root-like threads that develop from the spore dispersal, from which the fruiting body grow.  Mycelia are messengers, and they are responsible for sending nutrients from the surrounding environment to the mushroom

Fruiting Body captures a fleeting splendid moment of a long and continuous cycle.