Woman/Garden/Physics

Written By Beth Janvrin

I came up with so many ways to introduce the show.

A photo album of all the many-faceted, multi-spectacular, ever-wonderful, crushingly-painful/exhausting occurrences that came together to produce this show; a timeline (at the end); a poem.

I’ve never written an artist’s statement, an artist’s anything really. 

“An artist’s statement is a written document that guides viewers to a better understanding of your artwork. ”

But, as is so often the case for me, the ideas were long, large, excessive, overwhelming, info-dumping sagas that would tsunami people right back out the door before they had a chance to enter. 

So I tried to keep it very simple. 


Woman/Garden/Physics

Reflection on the therapy of spending Covid making gardens; discovering and pursuing the joy of painting and making again, despite chronic illness and new diagnoses; the all encompassing embrace of physics in every aspect of existence - life, art, eternity.

Now, the process, for any who are interested. 

How to tell the story?

3 main components 

  1. Woman

    • Ill, exhausted, soft, strong, full, sensory seeker, made of the stars

2. Garden

  • Sensory stimulation, mental health, beautiful/painful, effort/flare, peace/chaos

    3. Physics

    • The ribbon running through it all, stitching everything together - carbon, the hardest and softest, in everything everywhere 

What do I want people to see?

  • Peeling back the layers, the fabric of reality, ??Elsewhere??

  • Translucent of petals, weight of storm clouds, the dance of grass

  • Juxtaposition, contrast, movement, cacophony

“People just don’t see anymore, no matter how hard they look!”

  • So many transcendent points in the day - the physics of reality, the reality of physics

  • Depth, color upon color, how many greens are there in a spring or summer landscape?

  • A cloudy day reminds you, acceleration not gravity.

Hurtling through the universe at the speed of c

Do you feel how round the earth is?

Can you taste it?

  • “Old fashioned” views set against the “modern” world

  • Skies and flowers

  • Story of the Coopers Hawk and Little Red

  • The feeling of the west wind racing over the Blue Mountains and pushing against you hard enough to snap hundred year old maple trees. 

  • Sunrise over hayfields and sunset on the mountain. 

In the studio - everyone is either frozen in time or a statue, no movement, no clouds, no grass, carbon at rest

Insights over the last few years - reading, thinking, translating, producing, creating, destroying, therapy of movement, somatic, haptic, tactile

Gustatory architect

Music of the spheres

Light - the speed of c

Major themes 

  • Native species and restoration

  • Homesteading practises

  • Animal husbandry/ breeding

  • Always a maker/creator

  • Now finally a place to have

    • Chickens

    • A proper garden

      • Potager

      • Fruit trees, berry bushes, grapes

      • A rose garden

    • Pets

    • A studio

    • A music room for Josh

    • A library

    • Room for canning and preserving 

Timeline/Reading list to add context?

2019

February

  • Moved into 7972 Hwy 26, Stayner ON 

  • Started weaving on fallen ash branches from our hundred year old ash trees

  • Continued knitting, crocheting

  • New birding opportunities 

March

  • Sculptural crochet

  • Knitting Mosaic cardigan

April

  • Kokedama

June

  • First flower garden started

July

  • Chicken coop started

  • Incubating Black Copper Marans and Cream Legbar eggs - chosen specifically for quality of eggs, color and breed

August

  • Swallowtails form chrysalis

  • Chicks hatch

  • Swallowtails hatch

  • Welsh Harlequin Ducks - chosen for breed rarity, size, egg laying and beauty

  • Reading: The Suburban Microfarm, Amy Stross

November

  • Trip to Montreal

2020

January

  • First Black Copper Marans egg laid by our girls

March

  • First paint by numbers - Starry night over the Rhone, Vincent van Gogh

April

  • Beginning of potager

  • Started seeds

May

  • First chicks our hens hatched out

  • Added 3 Black Mottled Orpingtons to the flock

June

  • Herbal winemaking, beginning

  • Native plant species

  • Visited local native plant and garden centers

    • Return of the Native

    • Lacewing

    • Fiddlehead Nursery

  • Eating off our property

    • Pollinators/Parasitoids

    • Food webs

September

  • Birds nest fungus formed in the mulch on the pathways in the potager

  • Harvesting and canning

  • Wild apple foraging

    • Apple butter and Wild Rose and Apple Jelly

October

  • Visited Mono Pollinator Garden

November

  • Feelings wheel

December

  • Scale of Pain severity

  • Bought 3 Beltsville Small White Turkeys

  • Started making soap again

  • Found some glorious needle ice when out on a walk at the Eco Park in Stayner

2021

January

  • Sorted out the Apothecary

  • Started the Journal on bethjanvrin.com

February

  • Winter sown onions

  • Tallgrass prairie planning

March

  • First turkey eggs

  • Reading: Hope is the Thing With Feathers, Christopher Cokinos

April

  • Calmer to help with audio processing issues (they didn’t do anything, but Loops do work)

  • Reading: Bringing Nature Home, Douglas Tallamy

June

  • Watching: Elementary

  • Started the Rose Garden planning

July

  • Reading: Bird Cloud, Annie Proulx

    • The Designer's Dictionary of Color, Sean Adams

August

  • Reading: Engineering Eden, Jordan Fisher

  • Reading: Welcome to Your World, Sarah Williams Goldhagen

September

  • Brought home Bertie and Jeeves

  • Mammoth sunflowers

  • Reading: The Soul of Care, Arthur Kleinman

  • Reading: Divergent Mind, Jenara Nerenberg

  • Grey/Bruce Open Studio Weekend

    • Bought my first painting - Elizabeth Sander, Angel Wings (2021)

October

  • Incredible cloudy skies

  • Reading: A Beautiful Question, Frank Wilzcek

    • Solitude and Company, Silvana Pasternostro

November

  • Autism spectrum wheel

    • ADHD/Autism awareness

  • Our 2 big, old ash trees on the property were cut down

    • Stacking firewood

  • Start of painting in the “studio”

    • My first painting was a watercolor sunrise over the backfield

  • Bought my second painting - Jesse Unsworth, Daylily (2021)

    • Third Painting - Jesse Unsworth, Autumn Hill Arrowhead (2021)

December

  • Adding all the dried plants to the apothecary

    • Sorting seeds

    • Making Tinctures

  • Planning native planting under the roses in the Rose Garden

  • More Rose Garden planning, sporting what plants to purchase from Palatine

2022

January

  • Started painting on canvas

February

  • First collection on canvas and board

    • Moonrise

    • Leopard Flowers

    • Clouds over field

    • Suns rays

    • Morning Glories

    • Misty backfield

    • Calendula

  • Painting in studio almost daily on board, canvas, paper

  • Emily got me a Sta-Wet palette so my acrylics could save to the next day

  • An Enemy at Heart - pink peony painting, first largeish painting using a grid to get the details right for the drawing

March

  • Purple Monkey Wrench 

    • More play, this time reusing old encyclopedia pages and watercolor to make a sculptural piece based on the Monkey Wrench quilt block

  • Stress ball and stim toys for healthier stims

  • Emily got me my second van Gogh paint by numbers, Irises 

  • Beyond Monet with Josh and Emily in Toronto

  • Continuing An Enemy at Heart

    • So much focus on detail I needed a release so the start of the palette abstracts to play (and not waste paint)

    • First abstract - Peony Sunset

    • Now most focused paintings are accompanied by an abstract to relax/release and use up any leftover paint

  • Trip to Walter’s Falls with Emily

  • First painting sold - An Enemy at Heart, Deconstructed (2022) the palette knife abstract of the larger piece

  • Second painting sold - Peonies at Laking Garden (2022)

  • Started a log garden between the ash stumps in the front

  • Josh bought me a beautiful easel for Plein Airpril

  • Reading: A Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Illustrated by Inga Moore

April

  • First plein air painting in  light flurries - Backfield (2022)

  • First plein air painting with my easel outside

  • Reading: The Illustrated Provence Letters, Martin Bailey

  • Covid

  • Sold - Georgian Bay Ice Floes (2022)

  • First painting on wood from an old cottage Bren demolished - 

  • First collection on wood

    • View from Swiss meadows

    • View outfront of Blue Mountains

    •                                                   And yard

    • Backfield and treeline

May

  • Purchased piece from       for Josh

  • Reading: Letters of Note, Shaun Usher

June

  • Bought a stack of large canvases on sale from Michaels 

  • Spring Green completed

  • Our roses start blooming

  • Reading: Works of Love, Soren Kierkegaard

    • First You Have to Row a Little Boat, Richard Bode

July

  • Shoe Fish triptych completed, and sold

  • Swiss Meadows on canvas completed

  • Moonrise, November completed

  • Cumulus, July completed

  • Reading: Letters of C.S. Lewis

  • Reading: Love Notes from a Hollow Tree, Jarod K. Anderson

August

  • Webb, completed

  • Reading: Better Living Through Criticism, A. O. Scott

  • Nude studies

  • Went to see A Like Vision and Wanda Koop at McMichael Gallery

  • Started making mini books out of watercolor studies

  • Dancing Fecund, Catcher’s Mitt completed

  • Start of Pano Sunrise

  • Experimentation with texture, fractals

  • Anax Junius and wetlands deep dive

  • BMFA Squarefoot Show endeavors

    • Shinrin yoku series

    • Gneiss series

    • Sunflower series

September

  • BMFA plein air group at the Arboretum in Collingwood

    • Watched the baby snapping turtles hatch out 

  • Collingwood Art Crawl with Em, Bren and Maddy

  • Keats Autumn series completed, sold

  • Discomane series completed

  • Had the BMFA plein air group here

  • Reading: Ways of Seeing, John Berger

  • Trip to Prince Edward County

  • Stopped at the Peterborough Art Gallery along the way

  • Saw the Oeno Sculpture Gallery in PEC

October

  • 3rd place winner at the BMFA Juried Photo Show 

  • Doctor’s appointments in the city and trip to AGO

  • Trip to Montreal

  • Untamed Things at Nottawa General 

  • Lost Clyde in a windstorm

  • Reading: Portrait of An Artist: Georgia O’Keeffe, Laurie Lisle

November 

  • Reading: Started The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron

2023

January

  • Sorted out my logo for branding

  • Joined Thrive Together Network

  • Put in my Taking Up Space commitment form 

  • Rusty Roof and November Moon were hung in the front window of the BMFA

  • Reading: The Accidental Masterpiece, Michael Kimmelman

  • Started:Seed

    • Flat Top Mountain

  • Completed: 44* 24' 26.5" N 80* 15' 39.3" W (2023)

    • Imagined Coast (2023)

    • Cottage Garden 1 (2023)

    • Manor Garden (2023)

    • Imogen and the Tadpoles (2023)

    • Maisie and the Goldfish (2023)

    • Money Plant and Jeeves (2023)

    • Tiarella cordifolia & Cypripedium acaule (2023)

    • Symphony of Mums and Grasses (2023)

    • What’s a Tea Party Without Tea? (2023)

  • Played with gilding wood and adding “minerals”

  • Played with molding clay as one of my Artist’s Dates

  • Spirographs and visible mending

February

  • Started my TTN Virtual Art Residency 

    • Studio session set up

  • Sketch of Just out of Reach and then Full size completed

    • Sketches of cellos and the celloesque 

      • Watercolor florals

      • Nudes and statues 

      • Abstract, graffiti

  • A Nap in the Garden completed

  • Fractal Sunset completed

  • Tiny Hand completed

  • 3 Silver Squares completed

  • Reading: The Shadow Drawing, Francesca Fiorani

March

  • Reading: Art and Physics, Leonard Shlain

  • Studies: Tesseract

    • Perspective

    • Fractals

    • The universe as an oscillating system

    • Spectrograph of elements 

  • Continued Flat Top Mountain

    • Seed

  • Learned the Fancy Diamond knitting pattern

  • Started Grasses

    • Playing around with collage

  • Reworked an old self-framing paper painting into a new one, Sakura (2023)

  • Josh has his piano delivered and the music room as all set up

  • Completed collaged Dahlia/Section of a Cone series

    • v=⅓ hπr2

    • Sections of a cone

    • Cones and cones

    • Equation for eccentricity

April

  • Dropped a giant log on my foot and bruised it really bad

  • Reading: Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott

    • When Einstein Walked with Godel, Jim Holt

    • Men of Mathematics, E. T. Bell

    • Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Bertrand Russell

  • Planted some native trees and bushes I had been stratifying in the fridge overwinter

  • Saw work by Dragica Vidakovic at Nottawa General

  • Studies: Mass and Gravity

    • Minkowski spacetime

    • The Seikilos Epitath

    • Quintessence

    • Math symbols as language 

    • The perfection of roundness of an electron

    • Sound waves/ Light waves 

    • Pigment as particle, water as field

    • Space-time, Energy-matter, Universe-mind, Observer-observed, Intension-extension, X-y, Diamond-graphite

  • Completed Particle/Field

    • 6C

    • Fields and Particles series: Alephnull

    • Here and Now

    • Fields and Particles series: Fractal Filler

    • 6CPom Pom Dahlia

    • Apple Orchard, Spring Texture

    • Apple Orchard, Smooth

    • The Mother of All Roots

  • Reworked some old pieces:

    • Atomic Family (2023)

    • “Couleur Cardinal” (2023)

May

  • Completed

    • Biological Partners

    • Consumer Beware

    • Squaring the Circle with Masking

  • Started

    • Koch fractals

    • Playing with three dimensional paintings, flowers?

  • Framing and planning for the show

  • Sorting and organizing

  • Ordered show paraphernalia, and forgot to hand them out .. oh, well.

  • Made up Potager plans 

    • Weeded and mulched the potager

    • Started seeds out in the cold frames

  • All the final little finicky things to do before the show

    • Signage

    • Labels and stickers

    • Where should this go?

    • How could I have possibly lost a 16x20” painting?

Beth Janvrin
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