DOMINION- My Land on Bowen Island
DOMINION - My Land on Bowen Island
Paintings by Jean Bradbury
Show Dates: August 14 - September 2, 2024
Artist pARTy: Saturday, August 17, 6 - 8 pm
ARTIST STATEMENT:
What does the word “dominion” mean to you? Do you have dominion over the land you own or the land you rent? What about the plants and animals who share that land with you? What about the people who came before you? These are questions asked by artist Jean Bradbury in her upcoming solo art exhibition at the Hearth Gallery on Bowen Island, running from August 14 – September 2, 2024.
Born on a small Scottish Island and raised in rural New Brunswick Jean Bradbury has a deep affinity for rural places – and islands! Her paintings of natural environments are a celebration of plant and animal life, referencing botanical illustration, landscape painting and surrealism. Her iconography includes native flora and fauna of the west coast and Bowen Island in a thoughtful interrogation of our human relationship to green spaces.
Bradbury works in oil and acrylic on cut plywood and describes the unusually shaped substrates as a rejection of the man-made right angles that surround us. She says “We look at the world through our man-made phone screens and our square windows but I want to think literally “outside the box”. I want the shape of my paintings to relate to their subject matter. I paint the organic world not the manufactured world so my art is organically shaped – not rectangular”
Her exhibition at the Hearth Gallery also includes painted tree bark patterns mounted on eight-foot-tall cylindrical columns referencing three trunks. “Rectangles don’t feel right anymore!” she says.
For her solo exhibition at the Hearth Gallery Bradbury examines the experience of purchasing and owning a small undeveloped piece of land on Bowen Island and the responsibility of the new plant and animal relationships this engendered. “I am calling the show Dominion as I ask questions about the concept of “owning” land and having “dominion” over the plants and animals that already live there. How can I live on land without evicting the current tenants – the birds, mammals, reptiles, plants and fungus that all had prior claim to my so called “empty lot”.
Bradbury adds “This journey of questioning the meaning of land ownership begins, of course, with my white settler guilt. I am literally a white colonial person, born in Britain, who has “bought” a piece of unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh land. I am so privileged to be able to do this and of course this is deeply unjust in the larger scheme of colonial history. From this place of guilt, I have added my sadness at having to destroy some of the wildlife that already calls my land home. Is it possible for humans to live on land without causing destruction and displacing previous inhabitants? My answer so far is “no”. But I am choosing to begin to find a compromise by learning about the plants and animals who are my “tenants” in order to respect, celebrate, and care for them as we would new friends.
For this reason, I have spent the last four years of living on Bowen learning the names of the species on my land and on the island. In order to steward land, I need to know more about who lives here. The first thing we do, as people meeting new friends, is to learn names. I am just starting my journey of learning the names of trees so
I have not included Sḵwx̱wú7mesh names in this exhibition. I have also not included Latin names. I have included only their “common” English names to reflect a new friendship as though trying to recall someone’s first name from a brief meeting. When I learn more, I will be able to show more respect by celebrating the Indigenous names and the international (Latin) names of the trees I now live with.
Jean Bradbury invites all on Bowen to come with her and explore Bowen’s wildlife through this exhibition. She hopes that you will let yourself ask questions of how best to steward land and how best to share our island and our planet while still striving for housing security. She says, “This applies to our own yards and waterways where trees must be cut to make space for houses and cougars must be argued over - just as it applies to the global conflicts that are breaking our hearts in the Middle East, Ukraine, Africa and everywhere. Who owns and controls land is a question that will never leave us – though a Christian tradition suggests that we have “dominion over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” I ask how best to wield that unjust power.”