Long Time No See
Long Time No See
Long Time No See is a series of paintings that illustrate a personal ecosophy rooted in the landscapes of the west coast archipelago on the precipice of irrevocable change. It is a rumination of the ways in which we are an integral part of the ecosystems we inhabit and move through, and how we can be a powerful force of sustainability through the kind of relationships we form with the world around us. It explores the idea of utopia through the ecological lens of an isolated fundamental niche and how we extend the individual to the collective through a shared world view.
Ecologist Evelyn Hutchison described a fundamental niche as…
“… not something an organism fills or does but is instead internal to the organism. This niche contains all the possible combinations of conditions in which a population of a given species might survive, grow, and reproduce in perpetuity- all the iterations of climate + habitat + food + et cetera that the species might bear. This fundamental niche is a multidimensional hypervolume, a shape with many sides. In the very centre of this space is the species’ utopia, the part of the paradisiacal isle that perfectly combines all the conditions that would allow a species to live its best life. This survivable space fades towards the hypervolume’s edges until finally survivable conditions give way to un-survivable combinations. To perceive the entire fundamental niche of a species would be to know its every side.”
The paintings that make up this latest body of work are an exploration of some of my many sides, particularly the ones in which I connect to the ecosystems that I impact through habitation or transience. Some places are closer to home and some further abroad, but all are contained and bordered by the constant shoreline of the ‘paradisiacal isle’ upon which I live. Each painting represents a unique biome- pond, creek, bog, shore- that becomes interconnected through the way in which I move through them. In attempting to understand my relationship to the landscape, to articulate my ‘fundamental niche’ as Hutchison describes, I am locating my own personal utopia. It is a revelation that individual utopias aren’t discovered through navel gazing in the studio, but by exploring the world around us and the relationships we have to things outside of ourselves. Yet, all the disparate places we find ourselves in all intersect within us. We are the crossroads, the intersections that connect the world together, and it is up to us to determine the paths forward in living our best life in sustainable ways.
Long Time No See refers to the times in which I can visit and move through these places, some more frequently than others, but increasingly less and less it seems. It has been a while since I was last on the island of Montréal, but it is through these painted landscapes from one island that I am able to reconnect with another. It is through these connections between space and time where my utopia takes me. To you.