The Game of Life, the Dance of Death

Nathan Cann, "Fallen Soldiers" series of monoprints on paper, 2012

The figures are faceless and loosely drawn, but clearly identifiable as soldiers in bulky military gear with camouflage blotches.  These men are warriors stunned by bullets, thrown off-balance by the impact of a grenade, or already fallen, lying wounded and helpless on the ground.    Artist Nathan Cann depicts violent moments, but his ability to aestheticize raw subject matter turns death into a gestural, even graceful, dance.  The "Fallen Soldiers" series of monoprints steers the viewer towards an appreciation of style and away from any sense of morbidity.  These works are more concerned with surface and effect than disturbing or grisly content.

Nathan Cann, "Soldier 13," monoprint on paper, 2012

Nathan Cann, "Soldier 16," monoprint on paper, 2012

 The danse macabre began in the 1300s as a church drama based on the theme of the inevitability of death. Death, portrayed by an actor clad in a yellow linen skeleton costume, visited each member of the social chain in a sequence that started with the Pope and continued through a line of 24 characters, moving from nobleman to knight, monk, merchant, craftsman and peasant right down to a small child.   The script involved an invitation from Death, a refusal from the intended victim, an insistent rebuttal and the hasty removal of the chosen dance partner against his will.  The abrupt exit stage left was highly relevant to the everyday experience of the medieval audience as the  Black Death was rapidly and indiscriminately decimating the population.  The church performance served as a reminder that no one was exempt, so it was best to be prepared for, rather than fearful of the end of life.  The danse macabre was a morality play that addressed the anxiety of a death-conscious society.


 Hans Holbein the Younger revisited the theme of  "Der Totentanz" in a series of 41 woodblock prints issued in 1538.  His characters are depicted in everyday surroundings, being seduced, tricked, distracted or destroyed by a skeletal representation of Death.  With Holbein, the strength of the drawing is always the underpinning for the composition, and this famous series of prints demonstrates a masterful use of line.  It also reveals a rather wicked sense of humour and irony applied to very serious subject matter.

Hans Holbein the Younger, "The Knight" woodblock print, 1538

The caption for "The Knight" reads:

"After escaping the perils in his numerous conquests, he is vanquished by Death whom he ineffectively resists."


Nathan Cann states that his generic soldier images are appropriated from popular video games such as COD - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  COD is a first-person shooter game that situates the player in a squad of soldiers to wage a battle with enemy insurgents in a virtual landscape.  The artist has extracted elements from this war game simulation of extreme violence and reworked them as universal, benign iconography.  Are his fallen soldiers enemies or comrades?  In the end it doesn't really matter, as death is the victor in all battles.   Cann's images relay the same message as Holbein's - the final dance is inevitable.

The "Fallen Soldiers" series is included in the BFA Graduating Students Exhibition on display at the Owens Art Gallery, Mt. Allison University in Sackville NB until June 24.  His work may also be seen in his Flickr photostream.  

Frye, Gilmour and "The Perfect Order of Things"

When it was announced that author David Gilmour (student of Northrop Frye) would be participating in a writers' panel discussion in Moncton as part of the Frye Festival, I was eager to attend the event.  This year marks the centenary of Northrop Frye's birth and his literary contribution to Canadian culture was being celebrated locally with a 24 hour playwriting contest, symposiums, authors' readings and the festival slogan "Feed Your Imagination."   Gilmour's latest book "The Perfect Order of Things" had been described in a CBC radio interview as a "fictional autobiography."  An oxymoron, perhaps, but the premise of the story - a middle-aged man returning to the scenes of his past suffering to extract valuable life lessons from negative experiences - was certainly intriguing.

The panel discussion was supposed to be on the topic of "Telling Family Secrets" but the four invited writers, Jean-Francois Beauchemin, Dave Bidini, David Humel and Gilmour actually had more to say about the craft of writing and the selling-points of their latest books. The question of how much truth could be safely injected into fiction was overshadowed by a fixation on literature as revenge, a means for the writer to settle a score.   The fact that this was an all-male panel may have contributed to a certain amount of boasting about wielding the mighty pen in lieu of a sword to get back at detractors.  There was also some talk (initiated by Gilmour) about whether the size of a book really matters;  is longer and thicker really favoured by readers ?  The author made a point of mentioning, with obvious disdain, that a reviewer had commented that "The Perfect Order of Things" was a lightweight book that didn't seem hefty enough at 222 pages to warrant its $30 price tag.  It dawned on me then that David Gilmour, former film critic, doesn't like criticism.   He never hesitated to dish it out when he worked for CBC or the Globe and Mail, but clearly cannot tolerate being on the receiving end.

I did remember to get my pen out after the discussion had concluded and David Gilmour signed the title page of my brand new copy of his latest book.  In the course of reading "The Perfect Order of Things,"  I came to regret the fact that I had witnessed his performance as part of a panel discussion.  I wanted to like the book,  but David Gilmour in his multiple guises as author/narrator/subject intervened.

David Gilmour (right) making his point

The other signed book on my shelf, Margaret Atwood's "Negotiating with the Dead" gives insight into the craft of writing.  Atwood describes the relationship between the writer, the book and the reader as forming a V with the writer and reader remaining at points eternally separate, connected only through the text.   It is interesting to note that Atwood, like Gilmour, was a student of Northrop Frye at Victoria College.

"The writer communicates with the page.  The reader also communicates with the page.  The writer and the reader communicate only through the page.  This is one of the syllogisms of writing as such.  Pay no attention to the facsimiles of the writer that appear on talkshows, in newspaper interviews, and the like - they ought not to have anything to do with what goes on between you, the reader, and the page you are reading, where an invisible hand has previously left some marks for you to decipher, much as one of John Le Carre's dead spies has left a water-logged shoe with a small packet in it for George Smiley. I know this is a far-fetched image, but it is also curiously apt, since the reader is - among other things - a sort of spy. A spy, a trespasser, someone in the habit of reading other people's letters and diaries.  As Northrop Frye has implied, the reader does not hear, he overhears."                                                      - Atwood, "Negotiating with the Dead" p.126


Atwood's reference to Frye's version of John Stuart Mill's statement that "the artist is not heard, but overheard" points to a separation between the writer and the reader that makes the book come alive in a comfort zone, an imaginary world one step removed from the personality and curriculum vitae of the creator.   That's vital to the reader's pleasurable feeling of being immersed in or transported by fiction.

I would rather not hear the insecure David Gilmour trying to justify his past behaviour, whining about lost opportunities, indulging in self-pity, seeking revenge, or confessing his sins on every page of his autobiographical novel. Overhearing any part of that would have been far more enjoyable.  Here's a sample, describing an over-reaction to a negative review:

"Don't believe that old adage that a bad review is supposed to ruin breakfast but not lunch.  A bad review can spoil a good deal more than that.  This one, this ugly-minded pigeon shit ( I'll kill that m-----f-----!), made me feel as if my novel, only days out of the gate, had already a stain on it and that every time I looked at it, like at the couch, I would see only the stain.  It made me feel as if everyone in the world had read the review - people on the street, people going by in cars, people looking out the window of a hairdressing salon - which produced in my body a sensation of physical distress, like being in a horror movie.  No matter where I turned, I couldn't shake it."

In a CBC interview with Shelagh Rogers, Gilmour delivers a dire warning: reviewers who pan a book will make lifelong enemies!  (Especially if it's one of his books.)

Trout and Timing

On my way home from the beach last Saturday I noticed a patch of yellow flowers blooming at the side of the road. Robert knows that I have a camera in my purse at all times and happily, he doesn't mind pulling over in response to abrupt, unexpected cries of "Look at that!"  I got out and took some photos of the bright-and-early N.B. wildflower that without a close-range view, I might have mistaken for a dandelion.  This is Coltsfoot, also called "son-before-the-father" because the headstrong, perky flower comes up well before the leaves of the plant emerge.

Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

On Sunday morning it happened again.  A row of vehicles parked along the side of Highway 15 piqued my curiosity and Robert was directed off-course.  Below the causeway groups of fishermen decked out in vests and hipwaders were angling for trout in the waters of the Aboujagane River.  The opening of trout season is an important annual event involving New Brunswickers of all ages and I am told that when it happens to fall on a school day, children traditionally play hooky.

The men were catching Brook Trout (salvelinus fontinalis), a native East Coast species that is divided into two groups: stay-at-home resident brookies and their adventurous sea-run brothers.  The migrant or anadromous trout travel from their freshwater headquarters to the open ocean, stay out at sea for two or three months and return to the river to spawn in late summer/early fall.   The Brook Trout from N.B. have been known to swim as far as Newfoundland and the north shore of Quebec. They return from their journey with an iridescent silver colour and with more substantial body weight than their freshwater counterparts.  The sea-run trout are prized by anglers as the best-tasting.

Catch of the day

Conditions have to be perfect for the Brook Trout to survive a cycle of migration.  They need a non-restrictive passage to the sea,  Ph level of 5 or better,  and cool water that remains below 20 degrees Celsius even in the heat of mid-summer.  They are not tolerant to changing aquatic habitat;  oxygen-depleted water that has been polluted by industry, agriculture or effluent from cottages.  Their migratory patterns are altered each year and biologists often find it hard to accurately monitor the trout population.  The numbers must be improving, as this is the first year since 2007 that there are no restrictions placed on trout fishing in this region of New Brunswick.

It turns out that the mid-April appearance of those yellow flowers and the rise of trout from estuary streams are not unrelated events.  Fishermen know the signs: when the Coltsfoot is in bloom, the sea-run Brook Trout are on the move.  I am delighted to see both.

Eaarth (not a typo)

Tonight between 8:30 and 9:30 lights will be turned off in 150 countries around the world.  An hour of voluntary darkness covering Buckingham Palace, the Arc de Triomphe, Brandenburg Gate, the Great Wall of China, Sydney Opera House and even the Faleolo Airport in Samoa is an expression of concern for the environment.  The action started in 2007 by members of the World Wildlife Fund in Australia has become a popular public event for raising awareness and promoting green initiatives.

 “We can all change the world we live in, whether that change be big or small. This year as the lights switch off, Earth Hour encourages you to commit to go beyond the hour and inspire your friends, colleagues, organization and leaders to do the same,” said Andy Ridley, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Earth Hour.

Beyond the rousing call-to-action message, the gesture of darkening the planet for "Earth Hour" hints of a Victorian era mourning custom requiring black cloth to be solemnly draped over mirrors and paintings in the house.  Considering the hard facts about the effects of global warming and the grim forecast for our planet's future, it is entirely appropriate to be acting out a ritual with funereal connotations.

The book "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" by environmentalist Bill McKibben brings home the bad news: our planet is past the point of environmental rescue.   Unprecedented changes in the global climate are already well under way, the consequences are grave and the situation is irreversible, no matter how many lights we switch off, or wind and solar energy sources we switch on.  McKibben gives plenty of evidence for proclaiming the environment mortally wounded.

Ignacio Dillon, 2009
Electrical storm, La Plata, Argentina

• Scientists initially overestimated the amount of CO2 that would be tolerable for earth's atmosphere.  The number 550 ppm (parts per million) turned out to be too high.  According to a NASA study, the limit or crisis point would be reached at 350 ppm.  The earth is already at 395 ppm and rising 2 ppm every year.  
• The earth's average temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius which causes 45% more thunderstorms, and an increase of 1.5% in global rainfall per year.  
• Changes have occurred in the insect population, with infestation by destructive species such as the mountain pine beetle becoming more widespread.
• Between 1995 and 2008 there was a 75% increase in hurricanes in the tropical zone of the Atlantic.
• Ocean waters are more acidic than they have been in 800 years. In 2009 the oyster industry reported an 80% mortality rate for oyster larvae. 
• Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is melting faster than ever anticipated. In 2008 the Arctic ice cap was 1.1 million square miles smaller than ever before, reduced by an area twelve times the size of Great Britain.  
• The tropical zone is increasing in size, pushing arid areas further to the north and south.  Aridity and heat have reduced wheat, corn and barley yields by about 40 million tons per year.  The number of people on earth with too little to eat is rising.      
• The frequency of lightning is increasing by 6% with each degree C of warming, causing disastrous wildfires.  
• The cycle of global warming is increasing due to natural causes as well as our own emissions.  Methane gas is released into the atmosphere when ice or permafrost melts, adding more heat.

"We have travelled to a new planet, propelled on a burst of carbon dioxide. That new planet, as is often the case in science fiction, looks more or less like our own but clearly isn't," says McKibben.  That's why he alters the spelling of the planet's name to Eaarth in the book's title.

Not one to give up easily, McKibben points out that the action we need to take is a rethinking and reordering of our daily lives in order to prepare ourselves for a radically changed future.  He advocates less growth, more independently-run resources and a return to a small-scale, local approach to address the challenges of a changed environment.  Reviving the sustainable family farm and developing supportive community networks are positive, practical steps.  "De-centralized self-reliance" is key, as is the acceptance of a new human aim: to "manage our descent"  through "a relatively graceful decline."    

Photo by David Fernandez, 2009
Drought conditions in Argentina have reduced productive fields to desert.

Catalogue of Dreams

After two days of false spring heralded by a freakish warm front that drove the temperature up to 25 degrees C, a Maritime storm has moved in.  The wind howled fiercely all night and we woke up to a blast of snow ghosts whipping horizontally across the yard.  Our plastic garbage pail, set out at the curb for early morning pick-up, was retrieved from its resting place in the ditch three houses down from ours.

Reality, late March in NB

Spring may not be in the 5-day forecast, but it's already blooming in my mailbox at the Cap-Pele post office.  The 2012 edition of Veseys seed catalogue came just at the right moment, when my hope for a change of season had been dragged along the asphalt like a wind-blown trash can.  The glossy images of petunias and zinnias, carrots and zucchini, radishes and tomatoes delivered a strong dose of Tonic de Primavera.

I am enthralled by the text in Veseys catalogue and spend a lot of time poring over the written descriptions.   Evocative names like Indigo Treat blueberries,  Applause tomatoes,  Pay Dirt corn,  Red Ace beets,  Sugar Sprint peas, Noir des Carmes cantaloupe,  Calypso cucumber, Star of Yelta morning glory, Snackface pumpkin and Kong sunflowers might have been penned by a writer of romance novels.  There are passages loaded with adjectival phrases and similes that stir the imagination: cauliflowers with "beautiful lime green heads comprised of small pointed florets," tomatoes in the "one-slice-per-sandwich category," and pansies "with ruffled edges like whirling petticoats."  Words like "synergistic", "uniform," "earliness" and "bolt resistant" seem to jump off the pages.

Matthew Ridley (1848-1904) Wingfield Park, Lucknow, India

There are professional gardeners in my ancestry, and although I'll never achieve their level of horticultural knowledge or skill, I do share a basic love for growing things.  My great-grandfather Matthew Ridley trained at Kew gardens in England and subsequently served as Superintendent of Parks and Gardens in Lucknow, India.  He experimented with cotton crops, introduced rubber trees, and wrote extensively about the characteristics of different varieties of mangoes and pears.  I like to think that I've inherited his green thumb.

My own modest gardens have been planted in soil native to Canada, Europe and South America under a  wide range of climatic conditions.  The Veseys website informs me that the last frost in this area (Zone 5A) of New Brunswick can occur as late as May 24th, and the first frost as early as September 27th!  Four months is not a long growing season, but it's enough time to produce food for the table and freezer.  It's long enough to engage in the annual cycle of digging, planting, weeding and harvesting that satisfies the need to get your hands dirty with authentic work.   In the meantime, as the snow flies, I'm filling out my Veseys order form and dreaming of  Espresso corn with "delicious 9" cobs, 16 rows,  tapered ends and good tip coverage."

N.B. For a look at another paper garden, read about Mrs. Delany and her amazing botanical mosaics. 

Wildlife Patrol

When we started looking for a house to purchase in New Brunswick I had one item on my wish list that was an absolute essential - a window over the kitchen sink. You wouldn't think that this would be of utmost importance, but the houses we owned in Argentina and Uruguay both lacked that feature and I learned just how tiresome kitchen chores could be while staring at a tiled backsplash.

My current kitchen affords a view of our acreage, a long open stretch of land that extends from the backyard garden to an untamed wooded area.  Tall spruce, birch, poplar and pine trees stand in a thick mass of overgrown vegetation at the end of our lot.  I like the fact that this property combines a patch of cultivated soil with a fringe of uncleared growth; Eden adjacent to the wilderness.  The satellite photo on Google Earth shows that the treeline visible from my kitchen sink is actually the edge of a sizeable forest that goes on uninterrupted for several kilometres to the east.

I've been looking for wildlife ever since we moved in, hoping to see something out there in the backwoods.  Road signs posted along the highways in N.B. show silhouettes of moose, but the only moose I've seen this season has been a dead one, lying in the back of a truck in the parking lot at Tim Hortons.  I've spotted raccoons along the roadside, (also deceased) and one large porcupine (alive, but immobile) perched in a tree.  There have been no deer sightings, but I have heard the yipping of coyotes on winter nights with a full moon.

Last Sunday evening, as I peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink, I looked up and saw something moving in a snowbank at the back of the property.  The sun was just setting, and the woods were bathed in an orange glow.  At first I thought it was a tomcat, but the scale was wrong - a tomcat on steroids, perhaps?  The animal's shape was clearly visible as it stalked along the perimeter of the forest.   I called my husband who took one look and said "cougar."   We watched, dumbfounded, as the big cat paced, turned around and then disappeared into the bushes.

The elusive Eastern cougar ( Puma concolor couguar)

Are there Eastern cougars in New Brunswick?  I do believe so, but it's a matter that's open for debate.  There are suggestions that cougars seen in the East are either exotic pets let loose in the wild or Western mountain lions who have strayed too far from home.    In 2011 biologist Mark McCullough, an endangered species specialist, declared the Eastern cougar officially extinct after a five-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review of the animal's status.

Canada's federal Wildlife Service says that the evidence regarding extinction of the Eastern cougar is inconclusive.  While data may be deficient, there have been recent sightings in New Brunswick.  One thing is clear - a window over the kitchen sink is an essential architectural feature.

Room with a view

Without Cause

My attendance record is perfect.  Every day this winter, without fail, I've taken a morning walk along the frozen shoreline of Aboiteau beach.  Silent and vast, the white space extends out over the ice toward a razor thin horizon line.   One has the sensation of walking into an abstract painting.

Agnes Martin, "Gratitude" 2001

The paintings of Agnes Martin evoke the pure serenity one finds in the landscape, while remaining devoid of banal description or direct reference to elements in nature.  Her square canvases structured with grids and horizontal lines and washed with subtle colour have been called "minimalist" and "mathematical". While those terms may apply to the surface of Martin's work, the intent of the artist runs much deeper.  Her aim was to create a sublime sense of beauty.

"My work is non-objective.  But I want people, when they look at my paintings, to have the same feelings they experience when they look at landscape, so I never protest when they say my work is like landscape.  But it's really about the feeling of beauty and freedom that you experience in landscape."
-Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin

In this video interview, Martin says she paints "what is without cause."

A recent article in the Globe and Mail described a study being conducted by a Toronto psychologist who hopes to chart the way in which the human brain perceives beauty.  This area of research, known as Neuroaesthetics is a hot topic today as the scientific community races to find biological explanations for all kinds of responses and behaviours.  Themes that were once the province of philosophy, ethics and religion are now discourse for laboratory analysis.  Can the inner life be measured in this way?

I'm not so sure that beauty can be accurately mapped with an MRI scan.  Stand in front of an Agnes Martin painting and let the work sink in.  It doesn't really matter which areas of your brain are strongly activated - there are profound moments in human experience that just are, without cause.

The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos New Mexico is currently featuring an exhibition of early works by Agnes Martin entitled "Before the Grid".