- Painting the Nest, a presentation by artist Suzanne Northcott, Saturday, Aug. 4 at 3 p.m. in the ArtSpeaks Tent (on the grass lawn west of the Ferry Building Gallery) West Vancouver. Part of ArtSpeaks at the Harmony Arts Festival, Aug. 3-12, along West Vancouver's waterfront. Free. Info: harmonyarts.ca.
SUZANNE NORTHCOTT FEARED FOR HER LIFE.
Having hiked to the alpine to take in the view of the river valley and the Sikanni River Lodge below while on an artist trip to the MuskwaKechika Management Area of Northern B.C., the Fort Langley-based interdisciplinary artist and her fellow wilderness explorers were shocked when they came face-to-face with a black bear.
Not startled by the group, rather highly interested in them, the large animal made continued advances. Their efforts to scare it off, from throwing large rocks to making themselves look big were futile until, 20 terrifying minutes later, a shot of bear spray finally did the trick.
The bear no longer in their sights, the group hurried back to the lodge where they'd been staying, stopping only to retrieve their jackets and day packs, which they'd hung on some trees at a lower point in the climb. Northcott found chew marks on the sleeve of hers, a permanent reminder of how potentially dangerous a situation they'd been in.
Three days later, Northcott was leading an artist workshop at a cabin on Alta Lake in Whistler and yet again, a black bear, this time much smaller, advanced on her group, interested in the lunch they were having on the building's outdoor deck.
Again, no one was hurt and the bear eventually left them alone, however the experiences have definitely made their mark.
With nature a common theme in her work, Northcott pproaches her subjects scientifically, engaged in constant study of the world around her. Both in her art and her life, she makes a point of being receptive to her discoveries.
"I think openness in general is an ethic for me. It's kind of where all the good things in my life, that's where they all come from," she said Monday, from Seattle, Wash., where she spends a lot of time as it's home to her fiancé David. They plan to wed in September.
Exactly what sort of impact her double-bear encounter, still so recent, having occurred in the last couple of weeks, will have on her remains to be seen and could take ages to manifest.
"I haven't had the chance to paint since then but it's absolutely impacted on me enormously," she says. "I'm still dealing, I think, with the adrenaline that's built up in my system. It was profound. And then I started to remember after that, I started to remember dreams I've had in the past about bears and I started to just notice what significance a bear had to me. This is what I do, I just go off on a metaphoric binge."
Both an artist and an art educator, Northcott is set to share her unique approach to creation at the upcoming Harmony Arts Festival, the District of West Vancouver's annual 10-day summer event. The community-based festival, focused on supporting and celebrating local artists, boasts a variety of programs and events. Examples include artist shows, markets and workshops, live entertainment, outdoor film screenings, children's activities, and fine food and drink. The festival is highly popular amongst community members, seeing more than 100,000 people attend the 2011 edition.
Northcott, whose works vary from painting and drawing to installation and video, is making her Harmony Arts Festival debut this year and is a featured artist in its visual arts component ArtSpeaks: Daily Art Programs.
Originally from North Vancouver, Northcott's family moved to Langley when she was in high school. She has fond memories of growing up immersed in nature, playing in backyard creeks and wooded areas, and family vacations to Thormanby Island off the Sunshine Coast.
"We spent our whole summers there," she says. "So being outside and making our own stuff and scouring the beaches and building forts and making sand castles and crab pavilions and things like that, it was just a joy."
That early ingrained interest in the natural world led Northcott to begin studying to be a marine biologist, however, she eventually realized art was her true path and she started painting seriously in her late 20s. Now 58, she's found a means of combining both passions - art and the great outdoors.
"I do combine that natural history and the scientist in me, or whatever that is. I use my self-description of an artist as license to study whatever I want to study in whatever way I want to study it," she says.
Northcott has spent several years studying crow migration, butterfly metamorphosis, and bogs and wetlands. Her interest takes her all around the world; for example, she travelled to Costa Rica at one point to work on a butterfly farm and that's what led her to Northern B.C. earlier this summer.
"It's the connectivity that gets me going, observing something and learning something further from that observation," she says. "I want to know how things work and I want to know what's true. When I can figure something out, as a painting principle or as something in my life that comes together for me that I kind of understand all of a sudden or something that I observe in the world, when they start to loop together then that's when I'm really, really happy. That's what I'm looking for all the time."
All of her experiences contribute to her creative process in different ways, either from stumbling upon similar images, for instance light through grass, seeing something beautiful, or a dream.
There's a phrase she heard a couple of years ago that has stayed with her, an apt description of the way her inspiration is derived.
"It's asking the question of what wants to happen so I have a sense that something wants to happen and that's where I work from. . . . Things are stirring along at a subconscious level. Because of the commitment I've made to making creative work, that's where my mind is turned. Just as though if you were a screenwriter, your ear would be turned to dialogue. If you were a scientist trying to crack a code of some sort, your mind would be turned to that. . . . My artwork or my making of creative work and my life are completely intertwined and so I don't sort of sit down and think, 'Okay what am I going to paint?' I never do that. It's just all me trying to live in alignment with some kind of creative muse that's stirring away."
Northcott's demonstration, entitled Painting the Nest, a reference to her nest series, at the Harmony Arts Festival is set for Saturday, Aug. 4, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the ArtSpeaks Tent. She promises it will be a collaborative session.
"It's not a teaching situation where I'm saying this is what you do. It gives me a platform to talk about all the things that are important to me and rave on, which seems to be important to me, and then it gives me an opportunity to listen and to be witness to other people's growth and commitment and beauty," she says.
She plans to show how she puts things together and makes decisions, and offer insight into how she lifts off from one medium to another and will work with some mixed media, using acrylics and drawing media, potentially throwing in some photo-based work.
Being an art educator is a role she takes great pleasure in.
"It's like being with your people, surrounding yourself with people that are excited by the things that you're excited by," she says. "Each of these people, very often women, bring their life experience and they bring their humour and they bring their generosity to the situation. It winds up being a really, really rich experience. My point as an instructor, I sometimes call the workshop 'Doing your own work.' So the idea is that I want to teach the way that I care about painting. I want to teach about getting at your own particular voice and using your voice and knowing your voice and having some sort of conviction that that's interesting and important. I get to be a midwife or a witness to person after person after person connecting to that. So it's thrilling to me."
