Marking Time by Jennifer Pazienza and Paul Édouard Bourque

Our satellite show Marking Time, orbits, revolves and extends themes of identity and the fluidity of time Paul Édouard Bourque and I explored in Vision & Dialogue, currently on exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery through December 31, 2023.

Figurative and literal meanings associated with my landscape-based paintings are rooted in childhood art making that took place in my mother’s Italian American NJ garden. Surrounded by the encroaching urban landscape, beneath the shelter of a white peach tree, surrounded by roses and wisteria, herbs and vegetables I experienced how nature, other than human, invites contemplation and artistic recreation providing solace from the realities of domestic and worldly upheavals.

Seeking communion with worlds beyond the corporeal self, insisting on the value of joy, wonder and awe in the face of personal and social devastation and loss has never left me. Thankfully my Keswick Ridge, NB studio, overlooking the Wolastoq, provides me the sanctuary I need to pick up my brushes and act from the ground of understanding inspired by René Magritte,

“… to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality — it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.”

No easy task, but then most things worth doing aren't.

- Jennifer Pazienza, 2023