Broken Forest, our new painting

A few weeks ago, I told you about a weekend of culture on our little island, and showed you a painting we’d put up in our livingroom to see whether we wanted to buy it. Well, reader, we did! But since that earlier photo hardly gave you a good view of my friend Alison Watt’spainting, I asked her to send me a photo that represented it a bit more fairly. She did, and she also sent along photos of two other paintings in the same series. She began with this one, “Habitat,” in an 8×10 format — the painting’s since been used as the cover for Sue Wheeler’s eponymous book of poetryNext, Alison painted “Fire” (3’x4′) for her son, Lindsay.

And, of course, there’s our painting, 5 1/2’x 3′ pictured above, called “Broken Forest,” and Alison says she isn’t done with this series yet, and is still really engaged with “the lattice format” and “its possibilities for breaking space.”

The painting is stunning in its own right, of course, but what blows us away is how perfect it is in our livingroom. First, the dill-pickle green walls complement rather than fight with the strong colours and lines in the painting. Further, we recently gave in and got window coverings after ten years without — rich pumpkin orange cotton velvet curtains from Ikea — the exact orange in the painting. Yes, it’s a colourful room, but the strength (and size) of the painting imposes an order on the many strong, colourful elements (a dark green leather club chair and a burgundy one — both united by the painting, really!). As well, the painting’s trees are similar to what you’d see if we had a window in the wall, so that there’s a real continuity with the windows that front the room and look onto the ocean. The room is very close to the outdoors, almost part of it — when you open our back door, you look through the living room right out at the water — and this painting fosters that sense of being in a liminal space, partly in, partly out.

We’ve also recently purchased a painting from a brilliant young artist, Leanne Brusatore, who I learned of through a student art show and who has since had three of her own shows in Duncan. I don’t know enough about art techniques and terminology, but I really like what Leanne does creating a surface of depth (I know, oxymoronic, but there it is). At this time of year, I’ll have to be careful what I show you and when, but soon I hope to let you see something we’ll be hanging in our apartment. Meanwhile, you might want to visit out Leanne’s website and check out her preoccupation with ravens and pomegranates.