Rosemary Scanlon 2023 Longlist

Ultimately, notwithstanding these questions and uncertainty, the work reflects a sense of promise and the hope of rebirth. For instance, in one piece, from a crack in the burnt forest bursts a bloom of mushrooms. Elsewhere, a universal expanse emerges from under a manhole cover in the sky, from which a flower blooms. The small, intimate setting of the watercolour supports my exploration of vast concerns at the level of the internal and the everyday, where spiritual and animal elements of the human intersect. Significantly, I myself have been in the midst of a kind of rebirth, returning to my practice after an absence, during which I have been focused on my role as both mother and breadwinner. But in returning to my broadly-interested work with a renewed sense of the role of the personal therein, I have not only a renewed passion but a refined awareness of the human journey through life’s stages, from childhood, to adolescence, to parenthood, to middle-age, and beyond, and within the frame of selfhood, family unit, and society.

“Springtime Premonitions,” the title piece for my recent show at the Yukon Art Centre, takes inspiration from the boom-and-bust cycles of the lynx and the hare, which has fascinated ecologists of the boreal forest for more than a century. The work layers ecological narratives and personal narratives. Specifically, the two lynxes at play here represent my children, whose play with snow globe-like crystal balls speaks to their possible futures. Artificial-looking florals stand in contrast to wild roses, the goal here being to represent the precarious state of a Nature so influenced by human activity. Meanwhile the Stellar Jays serve as protective, revitalizing spirits in this space.

Part of a larger series of works titled ‘Animal Icons’ and featuring both the King of Hearts and the Queen of Hearts, this fully reversible painting depicts two wild cats framed according to religious iconography in order to invoke the tremendous significance of the lynx as spirit animals in the North. Much is at stake here: a game of cat’s cradle is played over mountain peaks—the string as construction flagging tape representing the interruption of pristine wilderness by industrialization, urbanization and natural resource extraction.

‘Bloom’ features the recurring character of the owl, a mother-like, protective figure. Her surroundings are scarred by human activity: burnt forest, chain-link fence, manhole, pylons, flagging tape. The owl’s nest is in jeopardy and there is even a sense it is blocked off from her. On the other hand, a celestial space is visible through the manhole-portal, with a flower growing forth. Further, a mushroom bloom emerges from the cracked forest floor. Butterflies and moths survey the scene as well. Are they watchful spirits? What’s more, mysterious hands make shadow puppets. What better future might they imagine?

Painted in the Fall amidst vibrant autumnal Yukon foliage, I was preparing at the time to shift to a new season of my life, post-childbearing years. I lovingly embraced this period of dynamism by turning to a diverse cluster of images that capture the complex series of emotions involved: dueling snakes, spiderwebs, dandelions going to seed, a matchbook, a key dangling from a branch. Further duality lies in the sleeping hare and the hunting owl.