“Pining”

My Contemporary painting entitled, “Pining” was created using acrylic paint and charcoal on 36” x 36 “ stretched canvas. “Pining” is a play on the words “pine” (for the White pine which is the subject of my painting) and “pining”
(for my longing to return to the site of which this painting was inspired).

“Pining” represents a feminist, anti-colonial discourse around Ontario’s provincial tree, the White Pine. It manifests the aura and revitalizing, nurturing energy I get from the White Pines or “pinus strobus” of Go Home Lake in Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada. Most pertinently, from an anti-colonial perspective, for Indigenous peoples, the White
pines were used for medicine, wood, food and many other uses.

For the first step of this painting, I used a photograph I took of this beautiful setting.
Furthermore, colour is a powerful medium for me, as an artist it holds emotional and sensory qualities. As I wanted this painting to evoke a visceral and emotional response to this beautiful landscape , I used a palette of florescent orange and pink acrylic paint which emanate a happy, loved feeling of gratitude. Moreover, these colours also hold a nostalgic sentimentality for me a they were the “Kool-Aid” colours used to represent the Black Power movement during my childhood years of the 1970’s.