Winter Garden 9 purchased by the City of Ottawa
September 2021: The City of Ottawa has purchased Winter Garden 9 for its Art Collection.
The twelve photographs in the Winter Garden series were born of a very specific time and place: the Ontario pandemic winter of 2021. During those inward-turned, domestic-focused and housebound months, while the crystalline quality of outdoor light reflected a vast whiteness, a small oasis of indoor growth helped to nurture hope and resilience. The performative rituals of tending, growing, rooting, planting and arranging this tiny garden, culminated in a celebration of ephemeral beauty found amidst bleakness.
A white bureau became the stage on which to explore transformations in colour and form over time, using only the natural light available, as lushness emerged from the white emptiness. The microcosm created in these twelve still life images distills the many conceptual contrasts of my past works to an essential few: here, a tenuous balance is evoked, hovering between the everyday and the ethereal, between void and fullness, inside and outside, and between the joyous fecundity of spring and the silent hibernation of winter.
The photographs centre on the idea of gardening as a metaphor for our collective experience of living through this pandemic time period: a testament to our ability to adapt and survive, even to flourish through difficult circumstances. Still in the wake of the pandemic, we continue to suffer the effects of accumulated stresses. Winter Garden 9 asserts hope for the growth of beauty and the solace of recovery that we all need. By presenting private fragility to a public audience, the work speaks not only of our exposed vulnerability, but also of our capacity for strength.
