Tragedy beauty and irony

I realized that after all my rambling on the initial posts here, that there was no artwork posted...some artist. Well, now that my good friend Carel is a "Blog of Note", I guess I'd better get my act in gear and figure out how to work this thing.

This piece is from the first of my wilderness art expeditions in 2001. I didn't paint it until 2003/2004 because of the date and associated emotional issues; it is the dawn of September 11, 2001. I was alone, 260 miles into my journey on the Missinaibi River to James Bay. This was my first sight of the sun in 5 days after unrelenting cold wind and rain that had included a brush with hypothermia and a near gale. To see the sun was ........ well just say I have an appreciation for how religions get started. In rushing down to the riverbank I nearly startled these Sandhill Cranes that were feeding by my canoe. In my isolated ignorance it was the best day of the trip. I found out what had happened in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania at the Cree Indian village of Moose River on the 13th. I have a brother who had just started his stint on the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon and a first cousin who had his office on the 103rd floor of the WTC. For a brief few seconds after the initial shock passed, I uncharitably wondered if this sort of thing was what the locals liked to tell unsuspecting canoeists who hadn't seen another human for many days or weeks. There was no way to contact anyone, so all I could do was wait for the train. Moose River is where the Ontario Northland RR crosses on its way to its terminus at Moosonee. It was only another 40 miles, but I needed to return home and all you need to do is flag down the northern trains anywhere in the bush. Back in Cochrane, Ontario I had gotten into such a state I didn't dare call home. I methodically loaded the canoe and my gear out of the boxcar and into my van which had been dutifully waiting in the parking lot for three weeks. Then sucked it up and girded myself for the call. The second my mother answered the phone I knew everyone was OK; there was no trace of grief in her voice. My brother had been in the Pentagon when it was struck, but on the opposite side of the building -- and it is huge. My cousin had had the more miraculous escape. Tragically no one made it out of his office; all his friends and co-workers died, but he had been called back home on his way to work that morning.

The "highlight" of my trip was horridly tarnished. The field paintings I'd done and the rolls of film sat for a long while. It finally started to dawn on me though, that along with the evil and suffering of that day, the world -- at least the natural world -- was still a profoundly beautiful place. That dawn, on that day, made for a greater contrast to emphasize the point. It also powerfully delineates an aspect of nature I seek on these expeditions and in my work; the "Wild". The non-human Earth that preceded us and will outlast us, and cares not a whit what we do or whether we are. We are of it, it is not of (or for) us. I made no reference to the date in the painting or its title; for me, that would have been exploitive and wrong. It is, however, a powerful part of the painting for me.