Canadiana

Submitted by: Kathleen Murray
Department/Faculty:Art & Design/Arts
Place of creation:Graduate Painting Studio, University of Alberta

As social animals, we like to connect. This approach helps us identify, organize and navigate the diversity of the natural world. Historically, Western science has been more heavily influenced to rename, reorganize, and redefine the wilderness.

Today, the government and most of our Canadian culture still prefers to use Western knowledge. Shared cultural knowledge is a powerful authority over what we experience and how we relate to the natural world. This is what my research is focused on. The Western anthropocentric perspective of the natural world.

I am overlapping artistic stereotypes of the “Canadian landscape” with the bias of Western science. My work is dominated by illustration because this style has extensively been used to historically visualize and share a specific viewpoint in Canada. I repeat and make patterns of my illustrations to form new landscapes that carry the significance of my research.

The part of Canada I am most familiar with is the district of Algoma. The flora and fauna I depict are all found in this region. This piece focuses on the narrative of the Elk’s life cycle. A deer species reintroduced and restored in Northern Ontario during the late nineties.