Artwork by Series

Time curls in on itself and around itself with a sense of urgency that is invisible. Opportunity is given in its absence and in its space. Humans when faced with dark days can reach for interconnected structures that give them comfort and confidence. There are subtle nuances and intricacies that exist in the gaps between people, emotions and ideas. Everything is fundamentally interdependent; plants, earth, wildlife and people. A tendril on a pea plant reaches for support as it grows, trying to connect for strength and support.  If it does not find support, it curls into itself, and disconnects, falling to the ground.  It cannot use itself as a support structure which is often the same for humans. We need others. The need of being supported, held, comforted and cared for is ever present in the world in which we live.

If time could stretch like a tendril on a vine we could suspend that last moment, but we never know when that last moment will happen. Sometimes the gap between what society could be and what can happen is as wide as the gap between a young tendril and a support structure. What is possible can exceed individual grasp, like climate change, homelessness, poverty or the economy. We can experience dark days by reaching too far on our own, and suffer a graceless fall like a tendril curled around itself on the ground, alone and unsupported. We continue to reach out to stretch our potential and interconnect to solve individual needs as well as global issues with endurance similar to a tendril.

Change occurs through deep time when life hangs like a question mark, fragile and always changing.  A moment in time can impact this planet, but it can also take years and decades to notice the change. Transformation is a process within human existence and within the ecosystems on the earth that allows us to live in the continuous present as we know we will not be the same person or planet tomorrow that we were today. The arithmetic of life can be looked at as continuous subtraction or as continuous transformation. When parts of our life and the earth run thin like the transparent chrysalis of a butterfly there is room for transformation, change, growth and movement.

We thought the environment was frozen in time. It is now a slow emergency. Nature measures time in epochs, eras, eons; it is not based on a human construct of days or years. Humans trespass without notice on nature’s time scale but have altered deep time. Our trespassing renders a lasting impact, stripping mother earth, leaving her vulnerable and weak. We were complacent thinking we had the answers and believing that tomorrow is always promised. Did we even really try? The eternal seconds of our nascent attempts to address climate change may be too late. The regrets will be carried by the future generations comparing what we could have done with what actually occurred.

Time is eternal and everything is gradually covered by the earth.

Did we really even try??

We thought the environment was frozen in time. It is now a slow emergency. Nature measures time in epochs, eras, eons; it is not based on a human construct of days or years. Humans trespass without notice on nature’s time scale but have altered deep time. Our trespassing renders a lasting impact, stripping mother earth, leaving her vulnerable and weak. We were complacent thinking we had the answers and believing that tomorrow is always promised. Did we even really try? The eternal seconds of our nascent attempts to address climate change may be too late. The regrets will be carried by the future generations comparing what we could have done with what actually occurred. Time is eternal and everything is gradually covered by the earth.

the silencing of women is so loud – Jasmin Thomas

The vacuum of silence exists in the moments when you are too busy, when you are trapped in it, making it impossible to be heard. The voice inside our heads is the only one loud enough, but we are unable to respond.  Silence pervades within a power struggle with self and self-worth. 

Women have learned to labour and to wait their turn in the long fade of time. Time passes at the same rate for men and women, 60 minutes to an hour, 24 hours in a day. Social change doesn’t move at the same pace for everyone. For some the movement and the movie is silent.  

When women are undervalued the currency of the collective is in jeopardy. Women must not live an individualistic life if they want to be heard, it is in collective numbers that there is a   voice.  The silt of tomorrow is created from the behaviours of today. When society silences you, it becomes internalized.  You begin to internalize it and accept it because everything sinks into the heart.

The continuous sounds of women’s silence is deafening. Each word spoken or not spoken has a weight, a volume that invades a space in the heart and mind. Women are silenced by men, by society, by other women and by the voices inside their heads. 

Transformation is the deep time of things when life hangs like a question mark, fragile and always changing.  A single moment in time can determine a life, but it can also take years and decades to form a life. Transformation is a process within human existence. This process allows us to live in the continuous present as we know we will not be the same person tomorrow that we were today. The arithmetic of life can be looked at as continuous subtraction or as continuous transformation. When we die, there is a universe inside our head that evolved and changed as we experienced life.  When parts of our life run thin like the transparent chrysalis of a butterfly there is room for transformation, change, growth and movement.

So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies
- Shakespeare – King Lear Act V : Scene III

Look how beautiful, glamourous, fun, happy, balanced, zen, successful, rich, valued…. I am.  Social media the gilded butterfly of our time, when “likes” became a plural noun. Only the best view, best composition, best “reflection” of who we are appears on social media and the “likes” do seem to matter, social media masquerades as objectivity. When does filter and fact become blurred? When does the footnote of a photo, become the subtitle and when is
it the script? Some efforts to make the perfect post takes it to the level of ridiculousness, “influencers in the wild”. Technically we could gild a butterfly and make it more beautiful than it already is but would it be worth the effort and the cost, if the original beauty is forever hidden.  Like a celebrity that no longer can just be a butterfly, the gilding limits their movement, weighs them down and sometimes crushes them. The heart and the thumbs up icons on social media have become the added gold. This gold can hold people down, limit their movements, decisions and ultimately drives much of the world we now live in.

Social media creates a fantasy world where people feel they can gild their own lives, creating exteriors making lives seem better, more exciting, more holistic, more beautiful than reality. Sometimes life is just living, no matter where you are. The groceries have to be purchased, the meals cooked, the clothing washed and the human body maintained, the simple act of sleeping must be done, none of these things can be gilded.

We all make a difference in this world, especially at a time like this. One person not following the isolation guidelines can cause a ripple in the world pond. One person affecting others they don’t even know. During lockdown, I created a “Pebble in a pond” silkscreen and added one colour a day to the image of the pond.

This is my piece to mark this time in world history, I figure it is better than a t-shirt saying, “I survived quarantine”.  T-shirts wear out and marks on the wall like a prisoner are sort of depressing, I wanted to do something permanent that had meaning. 
I silkscreened one colour a day for each day of isolation/quarantine/lock down.  Some of the lines in the piece are narrower than a pencil line. This has been an extremely difficult piece to make, technically and mentally.

I selected this image of a pond to create, because Covid19 was a pebble thrown into the pond, that is our world.  It has caused ripples that cross all countries, generations and social classes. No one is safe from the ripples. I made 12 of these pieces to mark the year that changed everything.

In the face of life’s challenges, it is sometimes hard to stay positive, see the light at the end of the tunnel and to feel grateful. The hedonic treadmill of life makes even the joy of getting through a difficult time short lived. The world moves at an alarming pace pushing gratitude and introspection to the side.

The root of the word gratitude is the Latin word gratia, meaning graciousness or gratefulness. A thankful appreciation for what we receive inspires gratitude.  It allows people to acknowledge the source of goodness in their lives, which usually lies outside of us. Gratitude allows us to connect to others and to something larger than ourselves.
 
We become so accustomed to the positive events happening each day in our lives that happiness becomes a moving target. If we stop taking for granted all that life has to offer, recognize how fortunate we are to be living in this time, we will be better prepared to work through the challenging times. There is strength in the foundation of gratitude.

Each flower is a symbol for something to be grateful for and each vessel has a hidden image at the bottom as often the unseen is as important as the seen. The thoughts we have inside our own head are as important as the ones we speak aloud.

Time is ever changing, uncontrollable, influential and affects everything on this planet. It is a personal measure with which we align ourselves with everything else; people, projects, landscape, climate, advancement, achievement, history.  The present is an elusive destination as the passing of each moment subtracts time from our lives. We can’t describe “now” because “now” is the past immediately after it arrives. This makes it very difficult to look at something now and predict accurately how it may grow in the future.

Time is an invisible cage that we are in, trying to regulate when we wake, eat and work. Despite this attempt, our circadian rhythms make decisions for us that ignore the construct of time, a communal creation of humans. Attitudes about time regulate life and rhythms of life regulate attitudes about time. In an era when the internet has perpetual daylight, it challenges our biological rhythms and attempts to quantify and understand time.

We strain towards the future to evaluate our own present. Time is our own personal system for keeping our memories straight. We have a retrospective view of our lives by which we judge ourselves, and which can lead to corresponding errors of anticipation as we attempt to predict our future. Time is really a reflection of what each person determines. Time’s effects are both visible and invisible, felt and not felt. Events are triggered by other events, often not by time. 

Time gains its value in its infinitude. Time never ends, it never began. No clock started at the moment life began and no clock will stop if life on earth stopped. Each year is one trip around the sun. Thousands of futures are possible in that time frame. One split second can decide an outcome. Time is a rigid bonelike structure, fossilizing the future.

Saskatchewan Arts Board - Permanent Collection (3 pieces) 2016

McMaster Museum of Art - Hamilton, ON 2016

Cube Gallery, Ottawa, ON, Canada
2014

TRU Gallery, Kamploops, BC, Canada
2014

Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA, USA
2015

Cat Tails/Tales

Monique Martin

Imperious Intimacy

Intimacy based on subtle nuances, shared history, collective memory and innate understanding of another’s thoughts is imperious in its very nature. The “imperious” and special intimacy that can only be gained through time and intimate knowledge of another is interesting in its energy.  Is the trip to becoming intimate with another ever over, or is it a never-ending cycle of getting to know a new person as they grow and change? Is the soul a place of facts? Or is it a shadow of the day before and the day before that???  Is there an invisible existing reality in each of us??? Our own souls as intimate and entangled as they are with us the person may not even be clearly definable or understandable to us.  It is doubtful that the soul and spirit is a place of facts and this series explores that concept with text and birds on a wire. We perch on the wire of our own understanding of our own personal imperious intimacy and with the intimacy of those around us ready to take flight to the next level of understanding when ready.

Secrets

We submit to a type of death when gazing upon that which we should not.  Just as when we hold a secret we submit to a type of death because it is in the holding of the secret that ours live are forever altered and true freedom can never be attained. Nothing goes away and all changes with secrets.

A person with a secret is like a person with an object in their hand that they must conceal each moment of their lives.  The very nature of every movement and thought is altered. Depending on what the secret is and how it is held the impact can be very large or small. 

Transparency

Transparency the place where the things you can’t fully remember and what you can’t forget collide in an awakening, and where the intersection of years brings you to clarity of moment, when the mirror of transparency appears, a personal transparency, where all is clear, understood and felt. Transparencies, when the one in the mirror and the one reflected are the same .

Love Locks and Promises

In Italy, there is a practice among lovers to connect a lock on a bridge and toss the keys in the water.  Once the lock is secured, the keys are tossed in the water, never to be retrieved.   This promise of love begs a question.  Can a relationship remain as constant and strong as this lock on a bridge?

Words are spoken that can never be taken back again.  This is part of human communication that has impacted human relationships since time immemorial.  The phrase “I love you” when spoken can never be taken back, just as the keys tossed in the water can never be recovered.  Three words forever change the two people within the relationship.  What if the other person can’t return the love, what if one or the other does not understand the love given, is frightened by it or is confused?  Locking ourselves together through eternity by voicing three words bares the soul, whether receiving or voicing those words. 

Games People Play

Does our essence determine how we enter the game?

Essence is the truth of what we are, what is our own: our latent and innate tendencies, our inherent gifts, our sympathies and antipathies.  Essence is what we are born with, but how does that essence affect how we play the game or if we even enter the game?

In “The Game” do we have moments of recognition, where we find our inner selves reflected in the outer world? Is this the moment when the game ends and authentic living begins? Are authentic people winners?

Sometimes we want to give up, run away and leave the game but the game is everywhere; leaving the game is leaving life itself. The game does not stop; night or day, the game continues.

It continues in many ways each day, including the possessions game, which takes over some lives and some cultures. The quest for more, the buying and accumulating, takes time from becoming an authentic person or interacting with authentic people.   Each possession we bring into our lives requires something of us and takes time away from relationships.  The game becomes more complex when possessions and people interact.

Flow

Using the fish to explore the concept of flow is a natural link.  The collective effervescence of fish moving together belonging to a group with concrete real existence is symbolic of humans absorbed in a task.  As humans we are most satisfied when we do something for the action itself rather than for some other motive.

The moments of flow can also be called a liminal moment; those moments apart from time when you are gripped, taken, when you are so fully absorbed in what you are doing that time ceases to exist.  “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.” p.3 Flow by Mihaly Csikzenthmihalyi  It is the autotelic moments in life those of self goal that are meaningful. 

Dangling Carrots - Fame, Fortune or Happiness

Self-motivation, understanding of one’s own place in the universe and social responsibilities as a member of a population must be balanced for growth to be measured in more than just an economic sense. There is duplicity inherent in the image of a carrot dangling from a stick.

The deliberate deception may encourage forward progress of an animal, but is unlikely to work for very long in the real world.  Humans in search of fame, fortune and happiness will chase a transparent dangling carrot that is seen by no one but the pursuer.  To reach fame, fortune or happiness, the mirage that is constructed in the mind of the aspiring individual will block out enough of reality to overcome obstacles to the goal. 

There is no concrete definition of “making it”, each person’s defining moment of “making it” is different.  Fame, fortune and happiness are never fully attained in all people’s eyes. Each person reaches for his own dangling carrot, which is a completely intangible and sometimes illogical destination.  What is duplicity to some may be satisfaction for others.  It may be necessary to continue to chase more elaborate and new dangling carrots in order to continue to strive and not stagnate as a person both spiritually and physically.

Touch

The tulip provides an artistic way of exploring various types of touch, and the impact that touching has on our lives.   A touch can give us a concentrated sense of life, an energy transfer like nothing else can.  The touching of souls, minds or hearts that are seeking contact with another is life altering.

Connection

This series explores connections in my own world from the wisdom of a professor, to the innocence of a child that I teach each person changes who I am and who I will become.  The unconditional acceptance of a person allows a connection or a common thread of interest to grow and to become a strong bond and time and distance does not sever.

Sir Francis Bacon said that the worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. Without connections to other people and their emotions we are destitute

Lives Overlapping

There is a trust in some people that blurs differences and blinds prejudice. Humankind pauses and looks in before entering, as though trust has been lost from natural design. Windows provide distance and a perceived involvement, yet the viewers do not know what the situation is until they participate fully.

Windows allow people to look out, but they also allow people to look in. Why do we look in? Do we want to see that other people are not so different from us? If there were windows on people that allowed us to see into their intentions, motivations, aspirations or potential, humans would we understand each other better. We install windows on superficial items like cars and houses, yet we cover up what is most important and don’t realize that our lives are very similar and overlap in many ways.

Lives overlap all over the world. We hang out our laundry to dry metaphorically and physically and hope that the overlap with others with bring a sense of companionship and understanding.

Trapped

Many times in life we try to trap or hold onto something longer than we can. We try to control scents, people, moments and feelings.  We try to trap moments through photography and smells through perfume.  The perfume jars are a symbol for this attempt to trap the scents of nature in a jar to use later.  When that bottle is opened and the perfumed is applied, the scent is lost to the air.

A perfume lingers after the person wearing it has departed.  The scent may be in the room, on a piece of clothing, or on a pillow they used.  This evokes notions of enduring strength and remembrance.  Perfumes thus symbolize memory.

Standing Alone

Monique uses tulips, a common flower to represent human emotions, from the fragile to the ferocious.  Fields of  flowers like crowds of people, often make us less aware of  the individual characteristics and nuances each posseses.  Each painting is ground level view  focusing on a single flower among an arrangement that personifies an intense human emotion.  As in a family, everyone appears similar yet will feel, respond and experience situations in a totally unique way - in essence standing alone.

Time marches toward confluences of harmony and conflict. The shaded images in black and white represent loss of innocence through aging.  The color works toward peace and a better way to handle conflict.   Major events are highlighted in color, the everyday tasks blend into shades of black and white.

Fragile

Those who suffer due to life’s unfortunate accidents can suffer an anathema that is not of their choosing.  As the outcome of each individual decision forces the direction of the next decision, events play out in a multitude of opportunities and challenges.  There is a delicate balance between stability and change that is tipped by circumstance and chance.  The survival of the fittest is completely negated through errors in judgment, a lack of understanding or the ever-present twists of fate. 

Our world, our own lives, our health, our relationships and our safety are all fragile.  At any given moment something could happen that could change the very nature of our lives and our existence in it.   We can be shaken out of our comfortable lives through the unconscious acts of others in a split-second.  We surround ourselves in seemed luxury and safety.  Our automobiles are a shell that we take for granted and trust, yet they can be shattered in a moment through all too common accidents as a result of lack of attention or care.

Treasured Hurts

There are hurts we hang on to that are re-lived.  Memories hide for a long time and can surface again to cause new pain. The vessels in these paintings represent human beings.  People search to understand themselves and it is their treasured hurts that have made them who they are or stopped them from becoming who they want to be.

Abundance

To have abundance is to recognize there is an oversupply.  It is the acquisition of material goods beyond what is needed.  There are many choices to make to fill our days and it is necessary to recognize when enough is enough.  However, each possession collected demands something of us and this demand is often time.

A major factor in the increased stress in many lives can be attributed to abundance.  The over-indulgence in gathering possessions is an attempt to measure success.  The challenge for modern society is to build abundance in life of non-material possessions and recognize their value.  Stress results from all types of abundance and equilibrium is established when there is a balance between needs and wants.

Naked Soul - Working Mother

The series explores a working mother’s place in society from conception of the child to the reality of living the day-to-day life of a working mother.  The exhaustion, the fear, the anger, the tension and the jealousy are part of the experience of the woman in the series.