The Alberta Society of Artists is pleased to present the solo exhibition “Grieve in Greenery” featuring the work of Alberta artist Gillian Coulton.

Artist’s Statement

The tangled connections between memory, place, and personal history are often difficult to describe, my practice attempts to embody the connection between memory and place. I am an artist and white settler, originally from rural Alberta, and my work explores my connections to the places around the rural landscapes where I grew up with a sense of isolation, uneasy nostalgia and personal discovery. Drawing on prairie imagery, my work questions and attempts to pick apart traditions of landscape painting and their interconnection with the prairies, through both the way my work uses medium and imagery while still acknowledging my roots and learning as colonial.

My work examines personal stories, history and the loss of memory as well as loss of connection to communities in those spaces. As the ways connections in experience and empathy are formed change, a shift is felt in how we connect to physical spaces and landscapes (both from memory and outside our door). Connecting to outside worlds have been shown to connect us to mindfulness and ourselves, and yet many also feel more and more like they are missing that connection.

My work begins with a focused specificity from which personal stories and subjective perception can be used in equal measure. It also uses a philosophy of efficiency (a necessity in rural spaces), varied substrates, and surreal imagery, to break traditions of landscape in Canada and to attempt to engage the viewer in memories of landscape and place and encourage a desire from connection with self and place. I use landscape painting and found wood constructions because they are methodologies that have evolved with me through my practice and the many changes in my life.