Though I am not a conceptual artist I regard the substance and ideas behind the creation of an artwork as important. When I start a work of art I find myself drawn to the form, the texture, motion, paint, grooves and the surface. Yet it is only because I have an idea that I start to apply anything to a surface. From there, it is the concept that guides the application and acts as a counter to the desire to incessantly explore texture and to experiment without reserve on that surface. Without content there would be unstructured and perhaps unfathomable form, without form their would be unrealized ideas. The idea and the physical aspects of a work of art weigh in as equal.

And so it is with my experience of gardening. Gardens are physical places; they are a place to touch, smell, and weed, they are a place to revel in the corporal abundance of nature. A garden is a place in which one engages in physical activity, yet they are also a place where one feels connected to something above or beyond mortal existence. Gardens have history, and connect us to one another and yet are very immediate and personal. They are a place in which through the physical many find solace, joy and a connection to something spiritual. The ideas and meanings that are connected to gardening often guide what goes into a garden, how it is constructed and how it is maintained. Understanding the similarities I find in the activity and thought processes of gardening and making art leads me to understand what it is about gardens that I find so compelling. It is the fine balance between, and inter-dependence of, different and distinct elements of gardening.

The birth, life and death of plants during the seasons remind me of my own mortality. The thoughts and feelings this acknowledgment of mortality brings can be overwhelming, leaving me feeling vulnerable in the comprehension of something that is out of my control. However much I try to exert control over the garden, by planning, weeding, tying and pruning, the garden remains fundamentally wild. I try to order it or tame it and then I turn around for a minute or a day and it has fallen, grown, wilted or bloomed- certainly every time I turn it has done something I had not planned. This unplanned aspect of the garden, though at times most exasperating, may also be the very thing I am most attracted to. What do I like about this aspect? The experience of only being able to exert certain forces and then having other forces come to meet and beat my efforts makes me humble and through this experience I realize the profound power of nature. It brings me in touch with something that is beyond me, a greater force than my mere, though often arrogant, humanity. At the same time that I am stimulated and amazed by this wildness, I am also brought to some peace or greater understanding of my place as a human when I am in my garden. There is a comfort that I am not in control, that things will continue without and beyond me. The Japanese believe that the garden is a place where you can actually go to paradise. When I enter my garden do I enter a state of mind that is paradisiacal? At times yes, but through physical labor, the food I enjoy and the life and death cycle that is all around me, I am also constantly reminded of my body and it’s limitations. This reminder though painful also brings me to a spiritual understanding. This balance, between the physical and the unworldly, I find rewarding and stimulating.

At the same time that this physical/spiritual balance is taking place the balance between history and the present is also going on. Through the tree that has spanned many lifetimes which grows still in my yard, as well as the activity of gardening that has remained essentially the same throughout history, I am also constantly reminded of the great expanse of time. My father, grandfather and their parents before them all gardened, essentially for sustenance but also for pleasure. It is something that connects us all, even when other things stop us from connecting. Cultural and climatic changes make the emphasis on why we garden slightly different, at times one generation gardened for sustenance, another for a combination of existential and physical reasons, another for pleasure only. Yet at the base or our gardening experience, when we have conversed or shown our gardens to each other there is a deep understanding that we are connected, by dirt, disease, beauty and struggle. We pass on information, advice, frustrations and funny stories. We have all had our hands in the dirt, pulled and struggled with weeds and blight, chased off some animals while applying the manure of others to our gardens. The fact that many people from many cultures, even many people in one culture take the time to make and tend gardens, whether they need them for food or not, can at times surprise. People make gardens for many reasons, the meanings they attach or do not attach to their efforts resonate through cultural, economic and class boundaries, creating a connection, which is seen and felt if not often acknowledged.

The very act of painting elements from my garden allows me to engage with some of these ideas. How I have chosen to represent my garden, as well as my experience of gardening, through my art is deeply connected to my practice of gardening. I struggle with control and wildness through my work. At times I have intellectual control over the work, I order it, structure and plan it, then I allow myself to put down paint, carve and saw, sand and glue the wood I am working on. The materials react with each other to make chaos, which again needs to be ordered and controlled. This dynamic remains throughout the creation of the piece. I try to remain true to the direction I have planned for the work, yet also through remembering my gardening experience, I allow and desire new directions to appear. Sometimes this new direction leads the work forward, a new plan evolves, and at other times this new direction is struggled with, brought back into control and guided back to the original plan.

Many of the materials I use also bring me close to the garden. The smell of the wood, and water, at times fetid and at times sweet, bring me physically and emotionally close to smells of the garden. How I work with the wood, sawing, sanding and banging, allows me a physical activity that reminds me of the physical aspect of gardening. The drawing and photographing of the garden I have done continue to be necessary for gathering evidence from which to work. Though they also capture some aspects of my experience of being in a garden there is another aspect I access only through the physical act of painting. When I photograph I often place my camera within the undergrowth, facing up or out from the plant. This view seems to most represent a “plants-eye-view”. There is often motion, blurring and bright light contrasting with deep dark shapes all of which strike me as being true to the experience of being in a garden. Plants rely on sunshine, soil, water, cool and hot; I try to capture these elements within my photographs. Some of my drawings are analytical and observational some are more expressive. The choice of drawing method is often determined by the weather and how this affects the plants, motion and light. Though the ideas that guide my work are still emerging I feel that it is at present closer as a physical activity to the meaning I extract from gardens than it has been in the past.

Research has led me to Anne Truitt[1], an artist working through the 1950’s to 2004. Truitt began a body of work during the 1960’s in which she paints multiple delicate layers of color with subtle variations on wooden constructions that she has had made for her. Writing in April, 1965, Truitt stated: "What is important to me (is to) make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality."[2] Her writing, though not art criticism, has been incredibly valuable to read. Often I read her words and think “that is what I have been thinking or feeling”. Yesterday, after writing about my thoughts regarding both the physical and emotional connections to the garden I read “a person honestly seeking to learn what life is about has to look in two directions: “above” for spiritual knowledge and “below” for practical knowledge. And that if wisdom is to result, development must proceed to an equal degree in both directions more or less simultaneously”.[3]

Though the physical form of Anne Truitt’s work is very different than mine, the driving force behind the creation of her work strikes me as being similar to mine. She wishes to put her experience into her art. The difference and learning for me comes when I discover through reading her books that she does not consider whether someone else has understood her experience, she does not talk about trying to make art in which others will look and recognize something. She just pours her own thoughts and feelings into her work, struggles with her own set of limitations and rules and then puts the work out into the world. From this standpoint others come to her work without demands placed on them, they can look and feel whatever they want with regard to structure, color or surface. She says one thing and the viewer is left to experience her work for themselves. This way of working, putting down your experience, strikes me as clear and honest and as a place that I would like to reach.

I have considered making installation work, or work which actually involves certain elements of the garden. I have asked myself why I don’t make gardens or installations of gardens, and though these ideas have appeal and may eventually come to something, they are, at present, not where my work lies. In contemplating a more “installation-like” approach I studied the work of Michael Singer, Roberto Burle-Marx, Paula Hayes, and a group of Canadian Artists known as the BGL. All of these artists work is appealing, yet I have felt that through their work they are talking about something other than the direct experience of gardens, which is what I wish to address. They talk about color, environmental issues, human and plant relationships…all concerns I share yet they are not the driving force of my art. I wish to talk about gardens and what they mean to me. I wish to convey the experience of being in a garden without actually having someone be within the garden. Gardens for my generation may seem to be a more passive less urgent place than those my grandfather’s generation tended, yet I would argue that while they may be less physically necessary from a sustenance standpoint, they are, in a world of people that is increasingly disconnected from nature, divinity and each other, more necessary psychologically. Gardens provide me with a place to connect to nature and all that can mean. In a garden I am taken out of my consumer driven worldview to a place where I can wonder about something beyond my control, a place where I revel in miracles and worry about death and disease and where I feel the joy and pain of unruliness.

[1] Anne Truitt. Daybook: The Journal of an Artist. Penguin. 1994 Anne Truitt. Prospect: The Journal of an Artist. Scribner Press. 1996. [2] Anne Truitt. Private papers quoted in http://www.annetruitt.org/2.html [3] Anne Truitt. Prospect: The Journal of an Artist. Scribner Press. 1996. Page 32