Micro/Macro

The Doris McCarthy Gallery is proud to present works by two artists concerned with disappearing forests. The watercolours by Robert Wiens are eloquent studies of true-to-scale tree trunks. The paintings of white pine and sugar maple reveal the beauty of a miniature landscape. Wiens’s project began with a trip to the old growth forests of Temagami in 1996, and continues with series of arboreal works using deciduous trees found locally in the area in which he lives. Wiens uses a process of drawing and painting from his photographs of tree trunks. The artist notes that while the process and subject are much like a traditional landscape, the severely cropped view references the characteristics of a singular physical object.

Melissa Doherty's paintings present a birds-eye view of Southwestern Ontario's forests and woodlots that have been carved and erased to make room for roadways and overpasses. For Doherty, contemporary landscape is no longer a vast frontier, but a limited material manipulated by humans. To the artist, each painting is like a still-life; a construction, or model. Doherty comments that the aerial perspective “reflects a view of landscape and our position in relation to landscape. We are ‘above’ it, unconnected and distanced from it, changing and rearranging it. Their palette is reminiscent of architectural models, representing the environment as increasingly fabricated and a backdrop to urbanization.”