All Roads Lead to Here

After over 10 years of research, exploration and painting, it is finally here!

I thought I would post some images from behind-the-scenes of the exhibition.  Most gallery goers see the finished product on the walls so even though I'm finished the painting process there is much more to do before September 8.  Especially since I am the coordinator of the gallery and along with some library colleagues I have to do all the prep work!

Getting the pieces to the framer and from the framer to the library in a Subaru Forrester was a bit challenging for the bigger pieces.  I was considering making crates but then I would have to rent a pick-up to move the crates.  There were only 10 pieces and I brought them right from the framers to the library periodically over the summer.

Waiting in a temperature controlled room in the Archives and Special Collections Division of the QEII.

Some prep work for a special treat at the opening reception.

Passages from the field books had to be scanned, transcribed, put together in Photoshop as one large document, 36 x 60 in, printed on a large format printer and then mounted on foamcore.  I really wanted these to go with the paintings, they show the words that inspired me to find these particular locations.  All except two are Howley's hand-written accounts from field work.

The gallery walls have been freshly painted, all ready for new work.

Report of Progress and other happenings

As I am finishing up this series I am reflecting on how much I have learned and how my painting has developed over the last seven years.

I have relied heavily on photographs in this body of work.  I just had to, the paintings are very detailed, the structures were huge and while I did make notes and sketches on site, brought back samples for colour and texture references there was just too much going on at the sites to be able to take it all in so I took many many pictures.  I found myself painting in that level of detail because I wanted to capture every variance in colour and texture.  My in-house geologist-in-training says that geologists need to see the details to interpret the structure. Every painting I finish I feel a need to go back and look at the structure again.

This year I was honoured to be one of the winners of the Provincial Arts & Letters competition.  This is the piece submitted, Tension Gash at Tickle Cove.

It was a  last minute decision to enter and I was very happy to have been a part of the exhibition at the
Rooms.  I found this structure on the trail to the Arch in Tickle Cove on the Bonavista Peninsula.  I checked a geology map and found there were many anticlines and synclines in one area.  Here is a pic of the structure:

Quartz veins is another thing I'm documenting, I love how they track along, I thought this was so unusual I had to paint it.  

In other news, coming up on August 6th is the opening reception of my first solo exhibition, Shoreline Stories at the Oceanview Gallery in my hometown of Carbonear.

This is a body of smaller paintings that I have been working on in-between the bigger pieces.  This exhibit is just another chapter in my journey to something...I'm not sure what, I just have to keep going where the road takes me.

The Past is my Future

The "Howley Project" has been in my life now for 10 years and I am gratified to see it come to a close and satisfied with the resulting artwork.  

This work that I have done has now led me down the path to more research and discoveries.  From my interest in James Howley I have become interested in the Central Newfoundland Dunnage Zone and found there has been lots of research in that area and it is still ongoing.  I’ve amassed a collection of geological reports that have been helping me find my way through the “melange” and I find other large footsteps to follow such as another geological idol, Hank Williams.

Last summer I spent time in Moreton’s Harbour and Salt Harbour scouting out some formations in and around those areas.

Little Harbour, near Moreton's Harbour

Carter's Cove

Strong's Island

Pike's Arm

Reading the reports I was inspired by the descriptions of the geology of the region and intrigued by the dynamic geological history of the land formed by the death of an ocean, Iapetus.  More research to be done on that subject and another body of work in the future.

Once again, my work in the QEII Library assisted me in finding inspiration and I spent a lot of time browsing through the geology subject area in the stacks.  I found many non-technical books about men who helped shape the story of the Earth.  James Hutton, William Smith, and Arthur Holmes (just to name a few) and I found other books that explained Earth’s story and helped me to better understand it.  I’ve started my own geology library and the titles I find in the QEII are added to my Amazon wish list!

I am working on one more painting for the Howley series and I reflect on how much I’ve learned from James P. and how much more I want to learn from those who have preceeded him and those who have followed him. The journey for me is just beginning.

Sorting Out the Red Mess

I am nearly done the painting of the confusing geology of the section near Little Dantzic Cove.  While this whole structure has many features, the part that is the most challenging is the enormous bed of red shale that takes over the foreground of the painting.  Howley writes in his field book:  “the limestones and red shales are troughtt (?) up by a fault and broken and distorted in all manner of forms”

“All manner of forms” is correct, the bed is abundant with different shapes and textures and seem to make no sense.  

 

It is an immense area to paint in detail and I had to keep building up the colour and texture before I was able to really put in the detail.  

I was also unsure about the composition at first, I thought the red would overwhelm everything else but I don’t feel that way now because of the shape of the bed, it comes down to a point, leading the eye to the rest of the structure.




There is more of the red shale out towards the end of the structure.  Howley describes this section of red shale as being “much compressed and altered"

I think he was dead-on in his description and for a lay person, these adjectives I could understand.

 As I study the photographs I am seeing the “bits of blue” running through this red bed, here and there, this blue rock shows up on the top of this bed underneath the limestone blocks and again towards the end of the structure.  

 

 

Howley describes a “small trap dyke cutting through these rocks at right angles to the dip and running very straight…”  The blue seems to unite the structure as bits of it appear throughout the whole piece.  Is this thin line of blue above the limestone in the middle of the image the trap rock?

 

I should be done this painting in a week or so…that is my deadline!  Then on to the last piece in the series, the barite vein of Cross Point Cove which should take me up until August.