shore 1

beach stones, graphite, pencil crayon & thread on raw canvas

8.5 x 20.5 inches (11 x 23 inches framed)

These stones were found on a pebble beach on the shore of Lake Ontario. They were gathered by handfuls in a small act of resource extraction. It wasn't until I got them into the studio and started to sort them that I started to appreciate the interesting variety of shapes and the subtle range of colour from gray to brown, cool to warm. When I began to attach them to the raw canvas, it became obvious that each one required very specific treatment, a particular way that the thread needed to encircle each stone to hold it. As I was doing this, I was thinking that it's almost as if each small stone has a will demanding that it be treated a certain way. It wasn't a big leap for me to think about nature's will and the planet's need to be treated in a particular way... kind of to stay stitched together!