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.

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.

Ref:
F.Scott Fitzgerald 1925
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Alexander McCall Smith 1998
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
G.E.M. Skues 1921
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Pablo Picasso 1920
Reynolds Price 1990
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Charles-Joseph Natoire 1735
Muzio Clementi 1803

"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.

"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.

"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.

Ref:
Samuel Adams 1768
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Blair Bruce 1885
C.D.Shanly 1859
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
George Elliott 1869
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Jane Urquhart 1997
Claude Monet 1873
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Hans Werner Kettenbach 2009
Muzio Clementi 1803

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

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

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.

Ref:
Pablo Picasso 1907
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
DuBose Heyward 1927
Paul Reuben 1621
Leonardo DaVinci 1503
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Susanna Moodie 1852
Jacopo Tintoretto 1575
Margaret Atwood 1970
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Susanna Moodie 1852
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
John Sacksteder 1994
Leonardo DaVinci 1503
Muzio Clementi 1803

Stakes.
Mark.
Territory.
Are they coming up, or down?
Reclaiming what?
From whom?

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

Who are we kidding? They say,
we are but the fleas on the back of the dog.
Our demarkations as inconsequential
and as annoying.

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.

Ref:
Mavis Gallant 1976
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Doris Lessing 1962
Anselm Keifer 1982
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1833
Jean Antoine Watteau 1716
Muzio Clementi 1803

Ref:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1833
Horatio Walker 1806
Muzio Clementi 1803

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.

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.