Lake Huron

Water Drawings is a photographic and video documentation of an ephemeral land art/performance project taking place in Georgian Bay. The general themes are social and environmental. There is an obvious contradiction between momentary gestures by us as artists and the duration of the massive natural geological environment in which this action occurs; the billions of years that it took to develop the backdrop of rock formations against the tiny frame of existence in which the human culture has been able to produce objects. The Great Lakes are an iconic part of Canada, an ecosystem that is distinctive in the world. As newcomers to this country and residents of Ontario, we are continually overwhelmed by the scale, the wonder, and the sheer vastness of this region. That greatness has a profoundly humbling effect, paradoxically bringing us back to our human scale.

Water Drawings: Inventory
2013
Digital still

Lake Huron

Georgian Bay #1, Four Winds, Pointe-Au-Baril
2009
Chromogenic print
129.1 x 152.4 cm
On loan from the artist, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery

The Great Lakes represent one fifth of the world’s accessible fresh water. Toronto is the largest city on the Great Lakes, arguably making it the fresh water capital of the world. As our society transitions from a consumer society to a society of stewardship, it is this natural asset that will be a jewel in the crown. It is up to us to understand it and respect it so that it will continue to give us life and security for today and into the future.

Lake Huron

Things Old and New
2013
Oil on canvas
127 x 152.4 cm
On loan from the artist, courtesy of Bau-Xi Gallery

Often, when I ponder the issues of why I paint and what I am trying to say when I paint, an image will float up before my mind’s inner eye. The image is of a large boulder on the Georgian Bay shore—monumental, weighty, profoundly silent and unchanging through eons of time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for a painting to have such gravitas as those rocks? Those rock-strewn, glacier-carved shores of Georgian Bay hold a central place in my psyche, I think, as a symbol of a great mystery in my mind. With my feet dipped in the water there and my back on those round warm rocks, I can most easily feel transported to a state of Paradise.

The Great Lakes

Letter to Sandy
2008
Diptych, mixed media and graphite on paper, giclée print of a digital image mounted on canvas
60.9 x 182.8 cm
On loan from the artist

The image in the diptych is a digital photograph of a rock surface on the Canadian Shield, located on the banks of the Serpent River just north of Lake Huron. The text is an homage to a story I once heard about the movements of the Anishinaabek across the great channel at Sault Ste Marie from Lake Huron to Lake Superior and south to Lake Michigan, which is the ancient trade and ceremonial route of the Odawa and Ojibwa peoples both before and after the coming of the Europeans to these shores. The figures in the centre of the text panel are my interpretations of the northern section of the Great Lakes, including Drummond and Manitoulin Islands, imagined as sentient beings or animals. This glass piece is one of four objects cast from a section of rock on the shoreline of the Serpent River in Northern Ontario where I grew up.

Letters from Home
2008
Cast glass on birch wood plinth
21.5 x 27.9 x 7.6 cm
On loan from the artist

Lake Huron

Go Home Bay
2013
Oil on canvas
91.4 x 121.9 cm
Government of Ontario Art Collection

Growing up in downtown Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario, I have enjoyed painting working ships that dock at the foot of Yonge Street. I like to explore the juxtaposition of the rusted freighters set against the natural beauty of water, ice and the industrialized shoreline. Recently, I have had the opportunity to spend time in Georgian Bay, where so many great Canadian painters have painted before me and found inspiration in the majestic sky, rocky shores and distant treelines. I want my work to reflect the feeling of being small in the universe, the grandness of nature, the beauty in the infinite forms created by nature and the pride I take in being Canadian.

Lake Huron

Every summer, beginning with my first summer—age 6 months—I’ve dipped my toes in Georgian Bay. It was on her shores that I had my first awkward kiss. It was on her rocks that I had my first sip of beer. It was on her beaches, in the space between her gently curving trees, that I fell in love and out of love, sometimes in the span of a few weeks. Over the years, these lakeside coming-of-age moments have come of age themselves, shifting to more subtle landmarks: deep, essential breaths; long moments of introspection; decisions made quietly, the waves crashing their applause. In 2013 I married an American and spent my first full year apart from Canada, apart from Georgian Bay. In 2014 I returned for one necessary summer, documenting my homecoming as I document all things these days—on Instagram.

Think I could maybe fit this whole lake in my suitcase?
@robinmay on Instagram

Lake Huron

Looking North from Above Cunningham’s Channel
2014
Oil on linen
76.2 x 152.4 cm
Government of Ontario Art Collection

I spend each summer on an island south of Britt in the archipelago of islands that forms the eastern shoreline of Georgian Bay. I work directly from nature, making small landscape paintings of the flat, rocky shoreline, and the changeable sky and water that make this area so intriguing to paint. The Bay is my home landscape. I know it intimately, carry it around with me, refer all other landscapes to it. It has determined my sense of scale, light and colour, and enters all my work.

John Hartman sketching at Inside Head Island
Photo courtesy of the artist