Heather Cline, ‘Viewfinder- Grasslands’, 5’ x 10’, 2024, Acrylic/Panel
‘Viewfinder’ is a collaborative project between artist Heather Cline and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Cline is creating paintings inspired by viewing the landscape through a conservation lens, walking the land with staff and stakeholders of the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
The initial project fieldwork consists of a series of one-on-one encounters in the environment. Cline is compiling ‘Field Notes’ for the project that consist of photographic documentation (land based and aerial) and audio recording. The goal is to have meaningful exchanges on the land that shift how Cline views the landscape. These encounters are being translated into large-scale paintings from the aerial viewpoint that depict this layered experience of the spaces. Painters can capture not just the reality of the scene but the emotional impact; they can layer possibilities with reality; simultaneous capture macrocosms, microcosms and explore a more evocative view of the land.
The artwork created for this project will be exhibited and toured as the ‘Viewfinder’ exhibition through the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery starting in the fall of 2025.
This painting, entitled ‘Grassland Pastures’, is the first work in the Viewfinder series. In June of 2023 Cline walked the land for three days with Krista Ellingson, MSc, Pag, Natural Areas Manager-Working Landscapes NCC. They visited an area in Southern Saskatchewan managed by the Val Marie Grazing Corp who are working with the NCC on sustainable agricultural practice to protect natural grasslands. Cline then returned to conduct an aerial survey of the area with private Pilot David Stanchuk and Krista Ellingson. This painting combines multiple images, viewpoints, and is a visual representation of the rich experience of viewing the land with the help of someone deeply connected to the landscape.
Nature Conservancy of Canada
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is Canada's leading national land conservation organization. In Saskatchewan, NCC has secured more than 170 properties and has helped to conserve over 198,219 hectares of ecologically significant land and water in Saskatchewan.
Grasslands are one of the rarest and most at-risk ecosystems in the world and are a critical part of Saskatchewan. They filter our water, help prevent flooding and droughts, sequester carbon, and for thousands of years have provided sustenance for humans. Over the past 25 years, Saskatchewan has lost more than 809,000 hectares of native grassland and now less than 20 percent remain intact. With a high diversity of species and some large tracts of native grasslands still intact, Saskatchewan has an opportunity that is not possible in other parts of the world – and opportunity to conserve grasslands forever.
Landscape painting in Canada has frequently been dominated by work less rooted in human geography; exploring the wilderness and generally downplaying the human reconstruction of the western prairies. John Prine was whispering in my ear as I started the dashcam series, placing the roadway firmly in the center of these artworks. Casting the viewer as the main character in a journey through the landscape altered by but not contained by human intervention. The works vary in size, exploring how shifting scale contributes to the visual impact. All the works feature acrylic paint layered on panel.
The series uses multiple layers of paint, often combined with carving and sanding, reworking the surface, literally reconstructing the landscape. I hope that this process of building up the surface of the artwork translates into how people experience the paintings, as the layers and shifts in the surface texture slowly are revealed over a longer period of contemplation. As the work progressed, I started to remove certain elements concentrating on placing the carefully delineated structure of the roads and signage in contrast with the loose dense painting of the landscape. Emulating some of the inherent contradictions in human interaction with our environment.
I strive for these works to be emotive paintings, rooted in physical journey but trying to build on the poetic nature of simple life experience. Geography as metaphor, with the acknowledged influence of the many writers, musicians and artists who have explored the rich terrain of our passage through the landscape.
And then in the spring of 2020 journeys suddenly became infrequent, as we all grappled with the necessary changes created by the COVID 19 pandemic. As the weeks of reduced city traffic continued, I started to observe changes in my environment. Local wildlife started to openly dominate my surroundings, brazenly travelling the local roadways and freely carousing throughout the neighbourhood. I started to ponder the importance of animals as portents in classic stories, religion and literature. The result is a body of work entitled Neighbours.
This is a series of block-prints that feature the animal visitors that I observed from my studio. It is a playful attempt to cast the animals in the role of portents, the imagery is simple and generally open ended. The work was created in the context of our current situation of a world-wide pandemic and on-going environmental crisis. I believe that the animals provide a moment of hope and perhaps wisdom in their ready adaptation and celebration of freedom in the midst of human crisis. Their behavior, perhaps, showing us all a pathway forward.