Sturgeon Bay Charts
Date: 2011
Medium: Acrylic, Pencil and Pencil Crayon on Fir Plywood
Dimensions: 4ft x 4ft sq.
Sale Price: $550
My paintings are inspired by landscape. Having been raised in a rural environment – surrounded by lakes and trees – I find a drastic contrast in comparison to urban settings. The two landscapes and their relationship with each other drive the inspiration for my paintings. My landscapes sway between representational and abstract almost as a way to represent the gap between the two spaces.
The water chart paintings resonate with a history of rural living, of a country of lakes. This past is mine, as I spent a childhood in the Kawarthas, but the paintings also evoke a visual representation of the textures of rural life. Painted on plywood, the water chart series draws parallels between topographical shapes, lakes,and lines, and the organic lines of the wood grain. The grain, visible beneath the paint, not only evokes memory of the weathered textures of rural structures, but also mirrors the topographical shapes of these landscapes. There is a beauty in the natural forces as they begin to deteriorate and obscure rural structures. The water charts, perhaps not the most common of maps, becomes almost an abstraction in itself. The topographical lines read both as information, and as abstraction. The water chart series is about the beauty of organic lines, and the visual textures of rural history.
Jessica Hoflick is native to Bridgenorth Ontario, a small cottage community on the shores of Chemong Lake- in the midst of the Kawarthas. In 2007, she completed her B.A. Honours in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph. Her paintings speak about the communications between rural and urban landscapes as representation of her identity within the Canadian environment. Her work sways between representational and abstract, almost as a way to bridge the gap between the two landscapes. Her work has been included in events such as Flicker, Peterborough Arts Week and CS Gallerie's SKPK, as well as exhibited in galleries in Guelph, Peterborough, and Toronto. Jessica owns and operates a small scale art school for both Adults and children. Between her paintings and teaching in Guelph, Jessica has been travelling the country by train making art in exploration of the contemporary Canadian environment.
