Canola, sunshine and blue skies

Daylight Savings, 40 × 60, acrylic and graphite on canvas. Growing up in Saskatchewan, we never changed our clocks but the feeling of longer days, late sunsets and the smell of ripening fields always brings me back.

Wherever I was in the world during my time in the military, I came home at some point over the summer, always back to the farm. It was a time to reset, to breathe deeply again, to hug my parents and come back to the land. The way the wam sun felt as I strolled the old pastures, the dog following patiently, the smell of the ripening yellow flowers smiling up at me, regrounding my soul. This new work explores those ideas of transition, belonging yet changing, holding on and letting go. As my own kids now growing into their own, everything feeling liminal, I began sifting through old photos and spending time with my childhood summer memories.

One of the things I noticed were the old buildings, the fading red barns, the grain elevators, those landmarks that were so prominent in my youth, like members of the small communities, slowly fading to ruin or disappearing all together. I suppose they too are suffering the results of change, rural landscapes evolving. We were proud to be farm kids and yet my own kids did not grow up like that, but that connection to the farm, the landscape, the big skies, still feels very real.

I remember picking wild flowers from the ditches, standing them on the kitchen table in old milk glasses vases that mom collected. I remember pointing out animals in the clouds as we lay back on the grass, days passing slowly, ending with drives down gravel roads to town for ice cream cones.

I knew I was home when the old elevators came into view on the horizon, sentries standing guard in the community, landmarks that were part of every season of life, the town’s name proudly stencilled on the side. To go back now and find them abandoned, or even gone, imploded upon themselves, brings a sense of grief, an awareness of the passage of time, the effects of change. Call me nostalgic, but I miss those times, the simplicity, the people who have since passed too. I am thankful for the memories, the big skies still taking me back, the scent of canola as I roll the windows down reminding me of what it is to feel home.

Way Beyond City Limits, 36 × 36 acrylic, graphite and metallic paint on canvas.