Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8, 5 - 7 PM
HEATHER CLINE – Above Below
The view of the prairie landscape from above is a series of disappearing lines, the grid road system, bordering patterns created by human passage through the landscape. The light and clouds move across the land breaking up the geometric and revealing small counterpoints of habitat and housing. Throughout the year the terrain shifts with the cycles of agricultural activity. Large tracts of land in south and central Saskatchewan have been transformed by monoculture but more diverse plants and grasses still remain in small areas like the valleys left by the passage of glaciers and waterways. Viewed from above there are islands of marshland, coolies, groves of trees and shelterbelts like a strange code dotting the terraformed landscape. Below we move through a more contained countryside.
When I was a kid, we made frequent trips on the grid to visit my Grandparents. My Dad would challenge us to be the first to see the town elevator; reward a Nickel. Depending on which backroad it was usually seen from about 10km away. Now I find myself looking for different signposts, the micro habitats along the roadway, sloughs and poplar groves, a row of evergreens planted along the lane into a farmyard. I now experience even more of a sense of isolation on the grid roads as more and more home quarters are transformed into serving merely as storage points for grain and equipment. On the backroads there is often dust in the distance indicating an approaching vehicle. This is always an event as you slow down to save your windshield from the spray of gravel that coats the surface. This ritual has become more infrequent over the years. My passage through the roadways built along the grid has an edge of nostalgia built on secondary memories of rural life gathered from family and wider oral story collection. This emotional response to the landscape shifts with complexity in the aerial views. When I view the terrain from the above I feel pushed past reminiscence to reflect on land use and the every changing geography of the prairies. Both experiences act as testimony to the history of land use in Canada. To paint these views from Above and Below is to act as a witness to the blend of manufactured and natural in the prairie landscape.
The process of viewing the landscape from above and below gives us the opportunity to consider both historic and contemporary land use. I feel that the process I am using to create my landscapes mimics my complex feelings about this human interaction with the land as I apply layers of sculptural paint, carving, and sanding to rework the wooden surface of my panels. I feel like my colour palette and the shift between loose paint application and small precise details captures the very evocative experience I have observing my habitat. Pushing between abstraction and the real I try to explore the impact of human intervention on the land.
About the Series…
On the prairie the view through the car windshield often reveals a never-ending roadway. Landscape painting in Canada has frequently been dominated by work less rooted in human geography, artwork exploring the wilderness and generally downplaying or naturalizing the human reconstruction of the Canadian prairies. The body of work featured in the exhibition ‘Above Below’ started with a series of landscapes, the ‘Dashcam’ paintings. The roadway is central in these artworks, placing the viewer on a constructed path. As the work progressed I was drawn to places where more organic backroads and prairie trails intersect with the grid, often following along streams, riverbeds and glacial pathways. The ‘Skyhawk’ series explores a wider view of the prairie landscape as seen from above. This viewpoint reveals the patchwork grid, a geometric system of organization imposed upon the land. This collision of the carefully surveyed grid system and the reality of geography seems an apt metaphor for the complex implications we currently face in our interaction with the landscape. ‘Shifting Grid’ highlights the aesthetic interplay of the grid roadway system with the organic contours of the land as a way of considering themes around land use and the role we play in the constantly changing geography of the prairie landscape.
BIO Heather Cline is a painter and mixed media artist based in Regina, Saskatchewan. Cline has a deep interest in public interaction, and has participated in residency programs and community engagement across Canada. Her activities have included setting up a ‘Story Collection’ office from an inner-city store front in Oshawa, Ontario and riding along on combines in rural Manitoba. She is fascinated by how personal history intersects with human geography. In her most recent art work she is exploring what geography reveals about human occupation through a series of landscape paintings incorporating roadways and aerial views of the prairie.
Cline has her MFA from the University of Saskatchewan and has exhibited in multiple group exhibitions, with solo exhibitions at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON), the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, and regional exhibition centers throughout Western Canada. Her work can be found in many public and private collections, including the Colart Collection, the Remai Modern and the Saskatchewan Arts Board.