Today I was reunited with a painting I feared had gone astray. This oil painting " Mazinaw Rock" was on exhibit at an unknown location through an art rental service that is now experiencing difficulty. But my call for help to find it was answered, and today, Earth Day, at a gas station north of the city, it was returned to me. This painting is of a granite cliff side - . Mazinaw Rock at Lake Mazinaw in Bon Echo Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. If one uses one's imagination, a female torso can be seen in the rock. Mother nature? A native spirit? The suggestion of humans and nature forever intertwined. Or so we hope.
Here is what the Ontario Parks site says about the magnificent lake and rock formation -
"Long a favourite destination for painters and photographers, this park north of Napanee is renowned for Mazinaw Rock. This 1.5-kilometre sheer rock face rises 100 metres above Mazinaw Lake, one of the deepest lakes in Ontario, and features over 260 native pictographs - the largest visible collection in Canada."
On my journey from my Halton Hills studio to the north of Mississauga where I picked up the painting, I noticed farmers' signs protesting the threat of encroaching subdivisions. "It's our land. Farms feed cities".
American artist Andy Warhol sums it up exactly "I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anyone could ever want to own."
Such a conundrum. How do we tell those who have worked hard, and would like to have a new house, too, that they can't. And at the same time, acknowledge that to pave over farm land that is so valuable is myopic. It is not lost on me the significance that I did an awful lot of driving today and picked up my painting at a gas station.
The big picture is a complex one, but for now I am grateful I have the smaller one back. Happy Earth Day!