Before it can ever be a repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from the strata of memory as from layers of rock."
-Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory
The paintings in this show represent my re-engagement with the familiar southern escarpment landscape that I grew up in and have lived near most of my life. As a child I walked the Bruce Trail near the Queen St. access in Hamilton and today I live on the bench of the Niagara escarpment in Grimsby. This ancient rock has shaped my life.
The majority of smaller works in this exhibition were executed en plein air while hiking the Royal Botanical Gardens Cootes to Escarpment trail. The vistas from the escarpment edge include the Cootes Paradise Wetlands, Burlington Heights and Halton Conservation lands. The highly sensitive ecosystems of this area are surrounded by dense urban development and their protection through environmental stewardship is of the utmost importance. The Cootes Paradise Wetlands form a vital link to the adjacent Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and it is the only direct Lake Ontario to Escarpment link remaining that is not bisected by a 400 series highway.
The view of Cootes Paradise from the northwest entrance to Hamilton has long been ingrained in my memory and I equate it with coming home. It held the joy of sylvan surrounds of my childhood. It is an iconic image of place that resonates as personal memory as well as communal and historical. Any Hamiltonian will recognize and celebrate this landscape, one rarely experienced by the wider population driving across the Burlington Skyway bridge with only a view of the city’s industrial profile.
"Intimately connected with these landscapes are people’s stories and the things of which memories are made: the cultural richness that promote a sense of local distinctiveness."
-Ken Taylor
The narrative thread in these paintings is one which calls to mind past histories of both aboriginal and Euro-Canadian settlement imagined in this arcadia of today blanketed in vegetation and life sustaining bounty. In the Cootes to Escarpment area there are at least fifty registered archaeological sites that include both aboriginal campsites and military encampments. The mounded sculptural forms that permeate my work seem suggestive of barrows standing as memorials to the lands past inhabitants.
Every landscape we envision and create, even through the lens of a camera becomes a cultural construct, imbued with our many experiences and histories as well as those of the land itself.
-Carolyn Dover
The majority of smaller works in this exhibition were executed en plein air while hiking the Royal Botanical Gardens Cootes to Escarpment trail. The vistas from the escarpment edge include the Cootes Paradise Wetlands, Burlington Heights and Halton Conservation lands. The highly sensitive ecosystems of this area are surrounded by dense urban development and their protection through environmental stewardship is of the utmost importance. The Cootes Paradise Wetlands form a vital link to the adjacent Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and it is the only direct Lake Ontario to Escarpment link remaining that is not bisected by a 400 series highway.
The view of Cootes Paradise from the northwest entrance to Hamilton has long been ingrained in my memory and I equate it with coming home. It held the joy of sylvan surrounds of my childhood. It is an iconic image of place that resonates as personal memory as well as communal and historical. Any Hamiltonian will recognize and celebrate this landscape, one rarely experienced by the wider population driving across the Burlington Skyway bridge with only a view of the city’s industrial profile.
"Intimately connected with these landscapes are people’s stories and the things of which memories are made: the cultural richness that promote a sense of local distinctiveness."
-Ken Taylor
The narrative thread in these paintings is one which calls to mind past histories of both aboriginal and Euro-Canadian settlement imagined in this arcadia of today blanketed in vegetation and life sustaining bounty. In the Cootes to Escarpment area there are at least fifty registered archaeological sites that include both aboriginal campsites and military encampments. The mounded sculptural forms that permeate my work seem suggestive of barrows standing as memorials to the lands past inhabitants.
Every landscape we envision and create, even through the lens of a camera becomes a cultural construct, imbued with our many experiences and histories as well as those of the land itself.
-Carolyn Dover