Transition

These are two of the paintings I did at our temporary home on George Street in the winter of 2016.

View from the Throne - 16 X 16

View from the Throne is a celebration of Transition. The view is from a second floor window at 852 George Street in Fredericton. It is mid January, 2016.

Earlier in the month we had closed up our country home to come here and try on city life after John and Marylea Reid, the owners, gave us the opportunity to use their home for the winter. What a gift! It was a chance for me to test my readiness to leave the place I had lived for many years. Ruth was ready, I was unsure – until we got here.

Before coming here, it was hard for me to imagine leaving the place I had poured my life into for so long. When I looked out a window in our old house or my studio, I was looking over a country landscape or into the woods. My paintings reflected that familiar reality – I had never done a cityscape. Here, when I drew back the blind on the bathroom window in the morning I saw the beauty of snow-covered rooftops with new eyes. The decision was there; it was time to move - and so we have.

The stars seem to have been aligned. We sold the old place quickly and I am writing this on the second of June, the day after we picked up the keys to our new home, not far away from our George Street neighbours, the Burleys, whose wintry back yard shown here is now all the more spectacular in these glorious early summer days.

Riverbank - 24 x 24

This is the back of the property where I grew up beside the Nashwaak River. I did the painting from a photograph that my father or mother would have taken nearly sixty years ago. My younger brother recently found the image among the many slides which were part of the estate left to us when they died and which we continue to sift through.

There is a geography of memory; places where we are transported to an earlier time. To visit them is always a reawakening and a means to establishing continuity in our lives. This is such a place for me; it evokes a wealth of memory.

I remember my parents working together lovingly on the flower bed and my own excitement as Dad worked at setting flat rocks in place to make steps down to the river. The combination of our back yard, the river and my boundless imagination made this a wonderland for a child. Later on, in a canoe, I became as familiar with the river as with the walk to school.

My parents moved from this place after I left home but they kept the riverbank portion of the property for over thirty years before selling it, and after selling, my father grieved about the decision for the rest of his life – as if he had sold their dream.

I have just sold the property I lived on for over thirty years. I tended it as lovingly as my parents ever worked on their place and my roots there are deep. It has been a huge decision to let it go yet I do not think I will grieve over it. It was a dream realized and a new chapter in a new place is now opening before me.

Working on this painting has helped me to make the interior transition that needs to happen along with the geographic move. How grateful I am for the freedom that has come from being so grounded in such a place as a child.

Our Transitional Home Our New Home