Out in the Noonday detail 2
2014
Oil on Linen
66x47 inches
Big sky, quiet earth.
The sun at its zenith.
Right between her eyes,
the insistent horizon
infallible, inevitable.
Out in the Noonday detail 1
2014
Oil on Linen
66x47 inches
In this land
so harsh and unforgiving,
find the fortitude
to meet it with a level gaze;
an aware and weighing presence
on either side.
Out in the Noonday
2014
Oil on Linen
66x47 inches
Big sky, quiet earth.
The sun at its zenith.
Right between her eyes,
the insistent horizon
infallible, inevitable.

In this land
so harsh and unforgiving,
find the fortitude
to meet it with a level gaze;
an aware and weighing presence
on either side.

Ref:
"Searing wind, scorching sky, tormented and heat-warped light, and not a tree. The band of shade thrown by the shack narrows as the sun climbs, until at noon it is all but gone. It will be two hours before it is wide enough on the other side to shelter a boy's body."
Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow 1955.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Framed Noonday
2014
Framed and Installed with Sketches
I Used to Make Coffee, Drive Cars
2014
Oil on Canvas
16x20 inches
Ref:
F.Scott Fitzgerald 1925
Muzio Clementi 1803
The Number One Ladies Opinion Factory
2014
Oil on Canvas
10x12 inches
Ref:
Alexander McCall Smith 1998
Muzio Clementi 1803
The Way of the Meek with a Fool
2014
Oil on Canvas
14x18 inches
Ref:
G.E.M. Skues 1921
Muzio Clementi 1803
Of That Sad Static Generation
2014
Oil on Canvas
8x10 in
Ref:
Pablo Picasso 1920
Reynolds Price 1990
Muzio Clementi 1803
Divide and Conquer, Isolate and Control
2014
Oil on Canvas
16x20 inches
Ref:
Charles-Joseph Natoire 1735
Muzio Clementi 1803
OutStanding
2014
Oil on Canvas
72x53 inches
"You are a challenging upright thing,
as sudden as a exclamation mark,
as enigmatic as a question mark."

Strong independent prairie woman,
anchored to the land,
under the harsh light of the skies;
but she is looking at,
she is ready to engage with,
you.
OutStanding
2014
Oil on Canvas
72x53 inches
"You are a challenging upright thing,
as sudden as a exclamation mark,
as enigmatic as a question mark."

Look at this good woman in this landscape
A soul not shrinking,
not lost in mystifying clouds of the feminine.
A capable body,
not for anyone's use but her own.
A truth-telling in the return of your gaze.


OutStanding
2014
Oil on Canvas
72x53 inches
"You are a challenging upright thing,
as sudden as a exclamation mark,
as enigmatic as a question mark."

Ref:
"Desolate? Foreboding? There never was a country that in its good moments was more beautiful. Even in drought or dust storm or blizzard, it is the reverse of monotonous, once you have submitted to it with all the senses. You don't get out of the wind but learn to lean and squint against it. You don't escape the sky and sun, but wear them in your eyeballs and your back. You become acutely aware of yourself. The world is very large, the sky even larger, and you are very small. But the world is also flat, empty, nearly abstract, and in its sudden flatness you are a challenging upright thing, as sudden as a exclamation mark, as enigmatic as a question mark."
Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow 1955.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Framed Outstanding
2014
Framed and Installed with Sketches
Acquiesce but with Resentment and Resistance
2014
Oil on Canvas
11x11 inches
Ref:
Samuel Adams 1768
Muzio Clementi 1803
This Curious Expectation of Survival
2014
Oil on Canvas
11x11 inches
Ref:
Blair Bruce 1885
C.D.Shanly 1859
Muzio Clementi 1803
Defy Yet Not Oppose
2014
Oil on Canvas
18x24 inches
Ref:
George Elliott 1869
Muzio Clementi 1803
Always Always Controlling the Colour of Her Days
2014
Oil on Canvas
16x20 inches
Ref:
Jane Urquhart 1997
Claude Monet 1873
Muzio Clementi 1803
Slowly Creeping Insidious Behaviors of the Abused
2014
Oil on Canvas
20x20 inches
Ref:
Hans Werner Kettenbach 2009
Muzio Clementi 1803
Landscape for a Good Woman - detail
2014
Oil on Linen
57x43 inches
Although the series is called Landscape for a Good Woman, it is a group of figurative works in oil on canvas and oil on linen. Comprised of 4 full portraits and 19 smaller sketchpieces, the works range from 4x6 inches to 4x6 feet. Each work, however, makes a significant contribution to the “landscape” created by the series
Landscape for a Good Woman - detail
2014
Oil on Linen
57x43 inches
This is a series of figurative works is intended to create an interior landscape, building sketch upon sketch towards, the larger works. Each sketch has a personality, a point of view, an opinion; one may not like, or admire, or want to be any of these one-dimensional women. They are built out of interior monologues, emotional, literary, art historical and musical references that colour single facets of her personality. Then the sketches combine to build the outer appearance in the full portraits
Landscape for a Good Woman
2014
Oil on Linen
57x43 inches
In contrast, the larger works are intended to be inscrutable, somewhat unreadable, for such is the outer appearance of her life. In the end, the years, the experience, and all of the interior machinations, simply seem to record the exterior evidence of a life lived out on these transitional foothills, somewhere between the mountains and the prairie.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Framed Portrait
2014
Framed and Installed with Sketches
Uninvited
2014
Oil on Linen
15x26 inches
Ref:
Pablo Picasso 1907
Muzio Clementi 1803
You Be Porgy
2014
Oil on Canvas
11x11 inches
Ref:
DuBose Heyward 1927
Paul Reuben 1621
Leonardo DaVinci 1503
Muzio Clementi 1803
The Inescapable Doubleness of Her Vision
2014
Oil on Canvas
18x30 inches
Ref:
Susanna Moodie 1852
Jacopo Tintoretto 1575
Margaret Atwood 1970
Muzio Clementi 1803
Because the Rocks Ignore Me Here
2014
Oil on Canvas
13x56 inches
Ref:
Susanna Moodie 1852
Muzio Clementi 1803
There is No Joy in Being the Object of Your Obsession
2014
Oil on Canvas
30x62 inches
Ref:
John Sacksteder 1994
Leonardo DaVinci 1503
Muzio Clementi 1803
Reclaimed
2014
Oil on Canvas
70x53 inches
Stakes.
Mark.
Territory.
Are they coming up, or down?
Reclaiming what?
From whom?
Reclaimed
2014
Oil on Canvas
70x53 inches
Cowboy or farmer?
Exploiter or civilizer?

She the independent, free and rugged loner;
or she the tamer of the wild,the home and comfort bringer
Reclaimed
2014
Oil on Canvas
70x53 inches
Who are we kidding? They say,
we are but the fleas on the back of the dog.
Our demarkations as inconsequential
and as annoying.
Reclaimed
2014
Oil on Canvas
70x53 inches
Fluid boundaries that rise and fall over time
like a wildfire, or a glacier.

Ref: "In the Dust Bowl years, all that country was returned to the range by the Provincial Farm Rehabilitation Administration. I can imagine myself bumping across burnouts and cactus clumps, scanning dehumanized waste for some mark - shack or wind-leaned chicken coop, wagon ruts or abandoned harrow with its teeth full of Russian thistle - to reassure me that people did once live here. Worse I can imagine actually finding the flat on which our house stood, the coulee that angled up, the pasture, the dam behind which the spring thaw created our "rezavoy" - locating the place and standing in it ringed by emptiness and silence, while the wind fingered my face and whispered to itself like an old blind woman, and a burrowing owl, flustered by the unfamiliar visitor bowed from the dirt mound of its doorstep, saying 'Who? Who?' "
Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow 1955.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Framed Fence
2014
Framed and Installed with Sketches
The Frictionless Lives of the Meek
2014
Oil on Canvas
12x12 inches
Ref:
Mavis Gallant 1976
Muzio Clementi 1803
And Its Meaning Would Recede to Infinity
2014
Oil on Canvas
12x14 inches
Ref:
Doris Lessing 1962
Anselm Keifer 1982
Muzio Clementi 1803
Round About the Prow She Wrote
2014
Oil on Canvas
16x20 inches
Ref:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1833
Jean Antoine Watteau 1716
Muzio Clementi 1803
Borrowed Grace
2014
Oil on Canvas
12x14 inches
Ref:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1833
Horatio Walker 1806
Muzio Clementi 1803
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Light A
2014
Although the series is called Landscape for a Good Woman, it is a group of figurative works in oil on canvas and oil on linen. Comprised of 4 full portraits and 19 smaller sketchpieces, the works range from 4x6 inches to 4x6 feet. Each work, however, makes a significant contribution to the “landscape” created by the series. A limited pallet of alizarin crimson, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue is used throughout; the works are formally, aesthetically, thematically and emotionally linked. They build upon each other.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Light B
2014
The works are connected by crimson frame fragments. The sketches are not boxed away from each other, or from the full portraits; their interrelation defacto strengthened by the frame fragments. This 24-piece installation, with its semi-framed minimalist layout was adjusted to the shape of the gallery as it was installed.
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Dark A
2014
Landscape for a Good Woman - Installed Dark B
2014