{"id":7540,"date":"2025-03-12T10:07:04","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T14:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/?page_id=7540"},"modified":"2025-04-14T13:48:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T17:48:51","slug":"backland-suites-2025","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/?page_id=7540","title":{"rendered":"Backland Suites 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Go to backlandscoalition.ca\/Artwork & Photos<\/a> for related pages.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0BACKDLAND SUITES CURATORIAL STATEMENT
\nFROM FRANCES DORSEY<\/p>\n

Whalebacks, glacial erratics, lakes, fens, bogs, marshes, Acadian forest and jack pine\/crowberry barrens can all be found a stone\u2019s throw away from downtown Halifax in the Purcell\u2019s Cove Backlands. Persisting as a precious though challenged habitat for wildlife, plants and human visitors, numerous artists have found source material here over the years. The rugged terrain, rich and varied palette of seasonally shifting colour, bird sounds and tenacious vegetation serve as springboards for imagination.<\/p>\n

Backlands Suites at the Chase Gallery brings together suites of work from nine visual artists working in a range of media<\/strong>. Each artist employs a particular vision for channeling their investigations of the Backlands, connected one to another through emotional responses to a profound and wondrous landscape. Each body of work takes its own direction yet collectively the drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptural explorations and weavings speak and echo back to one another forming a resonating choral voice. We hope that the viewer will be moved to visit and consider the Backlands, and join in the efforts to cherish and protect this and other such areas around HRM from further development, so that future generations can experience the same wonder that we do today.<\/p>\n

Avid birdwatcher Joshua Barss Donham is taken by the granite outcroppings<\/strong>, whalebacks, remains of early forest burns, and delicate forest plants of the Backlands. His charming and evocative photographs of birds and varied ecosystems are both seductive and poignant.<\/p>\n

The Backlands behind Frances Dorsey\u2019s home are a constant reminder of the natural world<\/strong> lying inches beyond the door. Woven compositions inspired by the terrain with particular attention to the astonishing glacial erratics question glacial, and human, time.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Escott observes intently, photographing the minute world of tiny plants<\/strong> on the forest floor, offering fascinating and wonderfully strange organisms that are a miniature universe teeming with life. We are invited to see the world in a grain of sand.<\/p>\n

Using watercolour, Catherine Perehudoff Fowler explores the forests and water<\/strong> around Williams Lake, laying down patterns of colour and weaving them together with small brushstrokes. The outdoor work is painted directly while the studio work combines imagination with drawing, painting and careful layers of atmospheric glazing.<\/p>\n

Graham Fowler grew up on the edges of the Backlands, which he describes as a childhood Arcadia<\/strong>. These works encompass digitally manipulated photographs, as landscape itself has become both subject matter and metaphor reflecting the unadulterated raw cyclical side of nature.<\/p>\n

Painting primarily in the en plein air technique, Geoffrey Grantham connects with the raw surrounding landscape<\/strong> in a very personal way. The intimacy of this relationship affords him a profound and rewarding experience.<\/p>\n

Ron Kuwahara brings the mind of the physicist<\/strong>, highly respectful of the forces of nature, to the spirit of the artist who sees the harmony and beauty of the natural world. His paintings explore patterns of light and shadow with splashes of abstracted colour which form recognizable images from afar.<\/p>\n

In an abstract and minimalist style using paper and cardboard, Frankie Macauley references the topography of the McIntosh Run trails<\/strong> with three-dimensional sculptures. Incorporating geometric shapes, colour combinations and patterns that respond to site specific observations, she was fascinated by the observable shifts in plants, ground and canopy from one trail to the next.<\/p>\n

Painter Christopher Webb describes the Backlands as \u201ca space beyond utility<\/strong> – a terrain shaped by time, resilience and natural forces rather than human intervention.\u201d His carefully rendered images of human encroachment on this space note fragility but also a kind of hopefulness that nature will in the end win.<\/p>\n

The diversity in approach of the visual artists featured here at the Chase Gallery echo the multifaceted richness of the Backlands, and the other wild spaces around our city. The collection of works here is just a taste of the reflections of the many additional visual artists, musicians, writers, dancers, philosophers, scientists, thinkers, humans who equally derive joy, inspiration and a delight in existence from experiencing these spaces. There are so many reasons to protect the animals, plants, and landscape we have so fortunately inherited here from more development, for ourselves and for future generations. We endanger them at our peril.<\/p>\n

Also View:<\/p>\n

– Explore the unique beauty of the Halifax Backlands though the eyes of nine talented artists April 3-29, 2025 at NS Archives<\/strong><\/a>
\nPost on this website, Mar 12, 2025, with Updates.<\/p>\n

– Backlands Suites featured on Global News<\/strong><\/a>
\nPost on this website, Apr 9, 2025.<\/p>\n

– Art of the Backlands: exhibit promotes Purcell\u2019s Cove nature gem<\/strong><\/a>
\nSuzanne Rent in Hfx Examiner (Subscription Required)<\/p>\n

– Backlands Suites Art Exhibition \u2013 poignant and personal<\/strong>
\nBy Cathy Vaughan, page 6 in Chebucto News April 2025<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Go to backlandscoalition.ca\/Artwork & Photos for related pages. \u00a0BACKDLAND SUITES CURATORIAL STATEMENT FROM FRANCES DORSEY Whalebacks, glacial erratics, lakes, fens, bogs, marshes, Acadian forest and jack pine\/crowberry barrens can all be found a stone\u2019s throw away from downtown Halifax in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":136,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7540","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7540"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7692,"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7540\/revisions\/7692"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backlandscoalition.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}