Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection

In this painting I included the shape of some old farm machinery - a legacy from homesteading, as part of the composition. I often use these abandoned forms as a starting point and let them develop and take on a life of their own on the canvas while still referring to a place and time. Some of the machinery began to suggest the abstract form of a swimmer and I tried to leave that suggestion in the final work.

The lines in the painting are used in an attempt to disrupt the expectation of what is real and what is imagined. I like to draw the viewer into the work because I want to immerse them in a story and experience that is theirs as well as mine.

While I’m working I often scribble down words and phrases as they occur to me. Summer and machinery kept popping up so they became part of the title. It becomes a play on words perhaps - describing the activities that surround the season as well as the thought that we might construct a memory of summer.