“Pining”

My painting entitled “Pining” was painted with acrylic paint and charcoal stick on a 36” x 36” stretched canvas. “ Pining “ is a play on the word, “pine” as refers to the pine tree and its surrounding waters as a subject and my “pining” or longing to go back to this lake.
“Pining” represents a feminist, anti-colonial discourse around Ontario’s provincial tree, the White Pine and manifests the spiritual aura and revitalizing, nurturing energy I get from the white pines or “pinus strobus” located on the magical waters of Go Home Lake in Ontario, Canada.
My painting was created with various shades of florescent pink and orange acrylic paint which emanate a happy, loved feeling of gratitude. Moreover, these colours hold a nostalgic sentimentality for me as they were the “Kool-Aid” colours used to represent the Black Power movement during my childhood years of thr 1970’s.
Most pertinently, and from an anti-colonial perspective, for the Indigenous people’s, the White Pines are considered the grandmothers of the Forest. The First Nations peoples relied on these trees for food, medicine and so many other uses. The waters or Go Home Lake were used for transport by the Indigenous peoples.
For the first step of this painting, I used a photograph I took of this landscape setting and edited out other trees to give this single White Pine —and its surrounding waters— prominence as they are the subjects of my painting, “Pining”. Colour for me, as an artist, is a powerful medium as it embodies, sensual and emotive qualities. The water is painted with blocks of colour to create a magical feeling to my artwork.