STATEMENTFor the past decade in all seasons and cycles I have been compelled to create work directly from the rural land where I live on the Niagara Escarpment (an UNESCO world biosphere reserve). These paintings are grown primarily with oil on canvas and I am struck by the common elements between my own art practice and the seasons and cycle of harvest. Each must have faith in what the land will give. When I am out painting in the land I am surrounded by new growth as well as the old and dying. All have grown from the same place and all go back to the same place: "each seed according to its own kind.. each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights on the earth..." - Emily Carr.
The experience of painting directly from the land is immediate and intuitive and it is affected on a daily basis by what cannot be controlled- climate. Through direct painting from nature I am cultivating a deeper understanding of the environmental factors that determine our world's future. What I also find enlightening in painting on open land is that I am in the midst of so very many creatures ‘unseen' -their continued presence entirely dependent on the land's eco system. Protection and the importance of maintaining ecological integrity concerning protected land informs my work. Beyond this, however, there is an internal force that exceeds even artistic sensibilities when I am in the land, painting. To quote Emily Carr: ‘There are no words, no paints to express all this, only a beautiful dumbness in the soul, life speaking to life.'
ENCAUSTIC WORKS
‘Growing' a Painting
These encaustic works incorporate paintings and drawings made during daily hikes behind my escarpment home.
The uprooted field flowers and fragments embedded around the paintings were pulled from the earth in the same area. Black eyed susans, wild asters, milkweed, queen anne's lace, goldenrod, wheat, alfalfa and seeds have been dried and pressed the old fashioned way between the pages of books-and are now preserved forever, planted and embroidered in rich layers of natural beeswax.
Jan Yates, SCA, 2008Please visit Jan's blog click here
To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the sun:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,
and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8