#BingoRageStudio: Fort Frances "Relay For Life" painting; 1

Bingorage quote of the day:

"JohnnyCat... Did you know that your distant ancestors spent alot of time eating my distant ancestors. Evidently we were pretty tasty and easy to catch... and now, I spend alot of good money to feed you and have you go poo on my carpet..."

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Last June, Pam Caine at the Fort Frances Museum asked me to participate in a couple of events linked to the David Thompson Brigade arrival in Fort Frances. One event was the schoolchildren's day out at Pither's Point Park learning about David Thompson, the fur trade and First Nations history, through art activities, games, music and Q&A. The link to my posting about that event and the painting that I created during the event can be found here.

The second event linked to the arrival of The Brigade, was the Fort Frances "Relay For Life". My participation in this event included building a large canvas and beginning a new painting based on my absorption of the events, the land and the people that its "birth" was embedded in.

That day and night were very wet, but I had a spot under the big tent to work in. It was important to keep the electrical cord jacks out of the puddles, but I was able to work and answer questions easily.

Broken Vulture Art. 'Relay For Life Painting'. Bingorage Studio.

I ended up anchoring the canvas to a picnic table, by screwing two 1"x4" pieces to the table and then tacking them to the box structure of the canvas. I ended up leaving the canvas, unattended in the park, for 24 hours after the next morning, so that the paint could dry enough to move it.

The base background of the piece was to be a representation of the Pither's Point Park geography, as seen from the air; a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water.

View Larger Map

Most of the night was spent building and priming the canvas. In order to make a provocative change in the piece and stir my interest in it through the fog of 3AM, I turned the piece on its side and made a significant change in the colour composition.

The black strip was partly inspired by the noir of night and the small details of bright points within it were inspired by the 'lumieres', lit in memoriam to those whom had lost the fight with cancer.

As morning brightened and the numbers of people walking around increased, I finished the initial composition by sketching in some figures and objects, by scratching their outlines in the wet paint with the tail end of a brush.

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Several months passed.

This painting spent some time in my shed and a whole bunch of time in a corner of my studio; throughout deer season and the depths of winter. There was a warming in February, however, and I returned to the piece. The first pic shows the painting, unchanged from the park, but dry.

I've long been waiting to add colour to the heart element of the composition and begin to refine the face element, in "the sky.

Water/wave elements added along the 'North' shore of the PPP representation.

Filling in the David Thompson Brigade/Voyageur canoe representation.

The most prominent element of the composition (so far) has been the "stitched-together-broken-heart". For me, it represents the struggle to repair two distinct "broken hearts": There is the repairing heart of the cancer struggle, representing the 'relay for life' effort and then there is the repair of historic damages done to the land now called Pither's Point Park (burial mound bulldozed, 99 year lease, railway cutting it in half).

A brown 'hill' is added to represent the rebuilt burial mound (yet to be realised).

The 'needle' of the stitching material is being incorporated into a pelican representation, down where the pelicans congregate at the Southeast end of the peninsula.

Last of the 'black stripe' eliminated from the water element at the right side of painting.
Current incarnation of the "Relay For Life" painting, juxtaposed with 'sketch' incarnation.