Moira Carlson:Paintings

"Bus Stop One" is the first painting I completed in a series about bus stops. At a typical bus stop you will find people who may be in close proximity but who are studiously ignoring each other. Each is intent on maintaining his own personal space, his own little world. If something unusual happens --a fellow traveler "acts out" as an example-- the event will be completely ignored as far as that is possible. Even though each person is acutely aware of the situation, he will pay no attention because he will not want to get involved.

I started to wonder how many strange things could happen at a bus stop before that wall of purposeful inattention would come down. I began adding animals and birds to liven up the situation but so far no one seems to have noticed.

Painting anything that pretends to be three dimensional on a flat canvas is always a game so it should be no surprise that the canvas is tearing and presenting yet another layer of "reality" to the viewer.

This is another in my series of bus stop paintings although all that remains of the original setting is the hard plastic seating and the two men.

I found the subjects for this painting, "Santa Fe Bus Stop", waiting patiently at a bus stop on Cerrillos Road on a very hot day in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

So far these gentlemen haven't noticed the Jack Rabbit, nor have they noticed that it has become so hot that they are now sitting on a stove. Even without the actual bus stop being present, the body language of these two people who are sitting in close proximity makes it clear that they are strangers and intend to stay that way.

Again the canvas is tearing and suggesting that "reality", at least in a painting, can be a fairly flimsy commodity.

With this painting I was playing with form and design and having a little fun with the English language. As I painted the ducks I found that the colors and patterns of the birds became more interesting to me than any attempt to paint a "realistic" duck or drake. In places this canvas simply became a depiction of abstract patterns and forms running wild. Of course this would make the birds even harder to round up.

I enjoy plays on words and I thought that the title, "Getting My Ducks In A Row", was very appropriate. We all at various times try to bring some order to our lives, to get everything sorted out and well organized. My experience is that it never quite works as well as we think it should. Life is messier than that. There are always ducks that are wandering out of the frame or otherwise frustrating our plans. Then again, complete order would be very stultifying and dull.

I took a lot of reference photos for this piece and in the original photos the ducks were walking on a concrete sidewalk. I thought painting gray concrete under the ducks would be unexciting and a poor color choice so instead I painted a sky. I think it adds another layer of unreality and makes those pesky ducks even trickier to corral.

I have done several paintings of fish moving through obviously land-based botanical scenery. I like what happens to images when the elements are taken slightly out of context and "reality" becomes mysterious and unknowable and we are less able to take it for granted.

The title, "Figments", is more word play. The Oxford Dictionary describes a figment as an "invented statement; a thing that has no existence except in imagination." The plant material used for the backdrop is a brown fig (Ficus carica). The whole thing appears fishy to me.

You might ask "Why are the fish wearing hats?" One of the first times I put a fish in a hat was for "Carmen Miranda Campanulas". Of course Carmen had to have the bananas. After that there was no stopping me and I had to put the wizard hat on the little guy in "Party At The Hellebores". Why these particular fish are wearing flamingo hats is a complete mystery to me. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

This painting, "The Portrait Gallery", started out as a series of drawings of giraffe heads. As I drew the giraffes and tried to be tidy and frame each drawing, I discovered that the giraffes didn't like to be "framed" and kept popping out of the spaces that I had allotted for them.

The next step was three giraffe heads popping out of their frames but this made the projected painting too static. It needed additional elements so I brought in the people to watch the giraffes at their games. I thought that looked good but the lower right corner was too vacant. This is one of those paintings where things got added a piece at a time until the whole thing felt right. Thanks to my painting buddies and Allan Wylie for suggesting the velvet rope.

"Another Mount Baker Moment" reflects my love for the farmlands of the Fraser Valley and the always shifting and changing views of Mount Baker that I enjoyed when we lived there.

As mentioned previously, I am intrigued by what happens when you take "reality" a bit out of context. Playing with the scale of things is another way to do that. I like quilts and have made a few, even though my sewing skills are pretty minimal. If I were a better sewer, things would lie flat but as it is, the small squares tend to bunch up and give me strange (but interesting!) folds and creases. Sometimes life is a bit like that too.

Using quilt as landscape is an ongoing theme. I blame it on an early acquaintance with Robert Louis Stevenson. Quilts are, quite simply, fun to paint. Without looking "abstract", they give me a wealth of color choices and design patterns to play with.

This is one of the first of my Victoria paintings. Moving to Victoria was a big adventure for me but it was also quite disruptive of my regular patterns and activities. It got me thinking about the ruts I had fallen into, the things that I did just because I had done them for a long time. Moving seemed like a fresh start, a chance to re-evaluate and make changes.

The title of this painting is "Who Are We Now?". The image that I started with was the grouping of women. We were at the Saanich Fair when a woman handed my husband her camera and asked him to take a picture of her group as they posed behind the wooden display of ice cream cones ("You are what you eat"?). I immediately grabbed my camera and took several pictures of these ladies having their picture taken. There are actually three women posing but all you can see of the third woman is a slice of her nose and a bit of hair as she is obscured by the women who are closer. I liked that. It gave me a grouping of young, older and completely unknown.

The background is also Victoria specific, a little slice of Butchart Gardens showing a Torii gate. As usual, much of life happens behind our backs.

If you are curious about any of the paintings that I haven't mentioned, please let me know.
I will be adding different paintings and additional commentary as time goes by.