ISLAND TIME

Marion Jamieson

May 28 – June 23, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, June 1, 2024,  1-3pm

Now that I am once again living on an island, “island time” is a real phenomenon. It feels like there is more time and priorities for how to use it have shifted. It is more important to sit on the beach watching otters play than to be on time for an appointment; more important to cloud-gaze than to do chores. For a while now I have suspected that time is not the clockwork mechanism that we have been taught to believe in, but something elastic that stretches and contracts according to the mindset. Here time is of longer duration but the days fly by.

My art practice has responded to island time by allowing for more detailed, labour-intensive work that might take all afternoon for an almost unnoticeable addition.  And it has led to the creation of artwork that owes some of its technique to a time before mass produced printing, when artists carved images on wood, rolled ink on top and pressed the image onto paper. They were skilled at depicting the world using cross-hatched lines to convey light, shade, form and texture.

I studied these drawing techniques and for many years used them to create illustrations for editorial, advertising and book publishing. I sometimes carved my drawings into linoleum to make lino-cut prints, but due to the short time-lines in publishing, I usually used scratchboard to create cross-hatched black & white drawings that translated well into print media. To sharpen my technique, I also drew landscapes, portraits and still-lives that were not for commercial applications.

But having moved to this Island, removed from urban assumptions and pressures, I have once again taken up the challenge of creating detailed, labour-intensive line drawings with the cross-hatched drawing techniques of an earlier era. But now I am digitizing the original drawings and printing them using current technology. So they are an interesting mix of the traditional melded with contemporary technology. As it is neither old or new, this work is aiming at something timeless or outside of time.

I graduated with honours from the Vancouver School of Art where I specialized in printmaking, 3D design & fabrication.  After art school I performed & choreographed dance works, then produced illustrations for editorial, publishing & advertising before returning to the visual fine arts in 1998.