Centre3 Member's Gallery, James Street North, Hamilton, ON
An exploration of what has changed with us, since the pandemic lockdowns
Ink spiral is buckthorn green over responses inked in iron gall and olive green. All of this shifted with sealer, and will shift again, colour-wise.
Natural inks made in my ink room. All but the blues! I didn't have time to grind lapis lazuli or cobalt....
Process piece, for fun.
Logwood & cochineal ink movement over acrylic gel
Iron gall violet ink Responses
Studio photo before sealer
ink response to sealer
Buckthorn green and apple over full spectrum of inks for lightfast testing. Acrylic gel and zinc/titanium white between layers.
street view 1, December 2, 2022
Street view 2, December 2, 2022
Our joint show, the day before opening, taken from James Street North
Street View 4, December 2, 2022
These pieces were made to be seen in person, and also to spark discussion and collaboration opportunities. My work is increasingly moving toward a performative, relational practice, as I do my level best to integrate what I know from my experience and Masters in Community Music with my work in the studio. Anyone else want to play with this? Write to me!
For exhibition, collaboration and artist talk/workshop enquiries (after January 2023): keira@keiramcarthur.ca
During lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 I made a series of small pieces on paper which evoked, for me, the profound sense of isolation and shock we were experiencing in the world, in separation and in communion. (see Conversation Piece)
The four large scale pieces for this Centre3 show are made from canvas I used as a backdrop for eight years of paintings in my former studio, which I white-washed, leaving some echoes of the marks and colour beneath, like memories receding, but not quite gone. Over these I drew four images that for me were resonant with the responses I received to my publicly installed question, “What’s different for you, since the Lockdowns?”, and in many many conversations with people on front lines, in construction, and in health care. Overwhelmingly, these responses expressed a resilience I had not expected, an optimism, ingenuity and even joy that to me is intrinsically human.
The four large pieces are entitled “resilience’; ‘loss’, ‘optimism’; and ‘freedom’. Two smaller pieces are also in the exhibition, one with as many responses on as would fit, and another 12″square piece simply entitled ‘Yes.’.
For colour over the white wash and charcoal drawings I used natural inks I’d made from Logwood, Apple, Buckthorn, Acacia and Brazilwood trees, cochineal bugs, marigold and weld flowers, and iron gall ink made from wine and ferrous sulphate mixed with natural pigment. These inks are made for use on paper, and are not lightfast. I used them here to express the ephemeral nature of our own perceptions and beliefs; these colours are meant to shift and change over time, just as we do.
For exhibition and artist talk enquiries after January 2023: keira@keiramcarthur.ca
It is the fourth anniversary of my arrival in Hamilton to begin my Arts Council residency here. I write this on the eve of the public opening for After Lockdown/ In the Neighborhood, a joint show with Eileen Earnshaw, most amazing theatre designer and creative wizard, at Centre3 Member’s Gallery on James Street North. We […]
I’m wondering why I always come to this place, helpless and dumb, to make compost of the poorly formed beliefs I bring to a piece that asks more of me than I’d thought. Here I am, staring.
Morning coffees face the sunrise on the upper balcony of a dignified old Queen Anne house, one of two that have anchored Fifth Avenue E. this past century and a half.
We re-emerge after lockdowns, yes. But we are different from who we were in 2019. Shaken. Wiser, perhaps. More thoughtful, more conscious of what is valuable. Humbled maybe, by a new-found, still-fragile love for life and connection, for choice over the way we live our lives.
One tree drops a walnut just a breath before my head would have been there. I pick it up – green, cracked open by the hard path – and wonder at measurements of time. Permanence, confinement, illusion, the cross-currents of loss and gain, the rhythm of my breath.