Hallie Watson

July 2010

I'm working on this show at the present. It will open at the Dufferin County Museum and Archives July 11, 2010.

The address is 936029 Airport Road, corner of Airport Road and Highway 89, Rosemont, Ontario and I hope to see you there!

Gumboots and Drawing Board; Fields and Streams of Mono, Artist Statement

   My parents bought Bobbie Holmes’ place on the 25th sideroad when I was five. Ever since then my heart has been in Mono. I am a hybrid. In the week I would go to school in Toronto; on the weekend we would come to the country. Because of this I am a lucky girl, because I know equally what the country is and what the city is.

   When I think of myself at the farm as a kid I think immediately of being in rubber boots. In rubber boots one can do anything. I loved to squoosh around in puddles, walk thorough dewy, grassy fields and wade in the stream. A favourite game was to wade in the river and see how deep I could go without getting a soaker. Gumboots are a passport to interesting country possibilities.

   When my parents bought Bobby Holmes’ farm house, it was fabulously rustic. To my child eyes everything was different as could be from how things were done in the city. Life was an adventure. There was no furnace, so sleeping was under a mound of blankets. No plumbing, so the toilet was a potty affair in an unfrequented hall. There was an enormous wood stove. Baths in a tin tub.

   Out in the barn, in the beginning, Bobby still had his animals. There were chickens that laid their eggs all over the place in a wildly undisciplined manner. The cows lived in the dark in the lower part of the barn, and the white work horses lived in a stable in the upper part. Periodically they’d fall through parts of the floor. There was a huge wooden box of cow sculls.

   Life was a mysterious, fascinating, unexpected thing. Anything could happen. Outside, swallows swooped in the day, bats at night and the river was filled with fish hiding in the dark grassy overhangs. There were secret places and all the time I was reading, reading books of adventure and possibility, which might take place on this new and interesting stage.

   Gradually I learned about the inter-relationship of the creatures with the growing things. Life was always gently and imperceptibly changing. The seasons moving on, the expectant green spring turning to lush, vibrant summer, turning to orange and yellow fall, then to sleeping winter.

   I have a place in all of this. I am a small piece of the wildly complicated puzzle. I still wade through the tall grass in my gumboots, then take them off and sit in a field drawing. In this way I settle in to the quiet turning of life.

Sounds

   It is night time in winter. I am lying on my back in the snow looking up at the stars. It’s really, really quiet. If I’m still, there is no snowsuit swishing sound and all I can hear is the blood moving in my head. This is my first experience of no sound, the sound of everything sleeping and everything holding its breath.

   In the city, there is always something making a sound- cars, people, airplanes overhead, and even when there isn’t anything to hear there is a general sound of lots of air systems going, or things thinking in a waiting kind of way. The sound of machines on standby.

   In the country nothing is on standby, but there are sounds. In the too early morning there is a cow calling her calf over and over. There are crows far away. Instead of machines going, there are insects going and going. There are birds, frogs, wind.

   In the city the wind in the trees is eclipsed by other things; in the country rustling leaves or the swishing in the pine needles is a big centre stage thing.

   It is night time in summer and I wake up to the sound of the horses galloping in the field, closer and closer like dream thunder rolling towards me. Their hooves strike the ground in a tumbled rhythm. There is an excitement of sound, a jostling, a release of energy, a joyous expenditure of speed as they pass in the dark. The crescendo rises under my window and then recedes, fading to crickets, leaving only moth wings against the moonlit glass. I go back to sleep.

The Barn

   I am half way up the ladder looking up. The barn roof is way up there, the tin cover clicking randomly in the warm outside sun. It is very quiet except for the soft pigeon cooing coming from the rafters. There is the smell of ancient dust, accumulated over a hundred years of so of hay and grains and a gentle sifting of it sparkles in the sunlit stripes coming in through the cracks between the boards of the walls.

There is a decision to be made here; go up to the ceiling or go back down. The problem is what about the challenge of the ladder? There it was, rungs hammered into one of the huge upright supports of the barn, asking, no suggesting, to be climbed.

   My inner voice is speaking loudly. Somebody made this ladder a hundred years ago, nailing in each wooden rung. The only things keeping me from falling are two nails and an old thin piece of wood. I am dubious about my safety and cling there, imagining the next rung, firmly held, coming away and falling backward into the void. I look down to the dusty floor below. There would be no survival there, so the decision is to go up or go down.

   Why am I here? Well, the challenge. It was there. The Everest in the Barn, the wondering what things would look like way up there. I hook my arms through the rungs and look around, savouring my pigeon high view. Everything is there, each object and architectural detail without opinion. I can see the top of the house-like structure that they built so long ago to store grain. One year I had gone in there and found tiny, just born kittens.

   There are old metal abandoned farm machines, I don’t know what they’re for and doubt that they would work now that they are so abandoned and rusty. There are corners with ancient hay. There are nests high up with pigeon poop on the floor boards way below. There is that quiet, waiting silence. The pigeons wonder what I will do. Nobody knows where I am.

   I look up again. Would the view from up there be a lot different from this? I have no intention of going through the trap door onto the roof outside. Already I have done something to be proud of, since I am afraid of heights. I look around again and savour my position, hanging in the centre of this huge space of sunlit stripes and feel a oneness with it.

   I have a place in the time line of this barn. There was “then” when the people made this barn and there is “now” with me clinging in the centre of it. Though I am trembling from the fright of being too high, there is also a sense of peace. I did this. I am here. I climb down.

Click on any image to see details and to enlarge images.

Balsam Trunk

Balsam Trunk
13.75 x 19.5

Cedar Forest

Cedar Forest
19.5x27.5

Barn and Hollyhocks

Barn and Hollyhocks 19.5x27.5

Jumping in the hay

When my parents bought the farm life got suddenly interesting and exciting. Instead of the city, paved, orderly and swept clean of leaves and grass clippings there was gentle chaos. Barns were especially wonderful. There were huge piles of manure, broken boards holding up mountains of hay and ancient spider webbed rafters sheltering living creatures that were new to me and mostly scarily huge whose intentions and thoughts were unknown to city me.

There was so much going on in the basement gloom of the barn it was magical.

Over all of it was a delicious farm smell- a mixture of hay, manure, open air and work clothes.

There was a wonderful awareness of danger. There might be a hole in the old floorboards. I might fall through the floor and be lost forever. I might disappear down the covered well. I might be trampled by a pig. I walked around the holes.

When I climbed into the rafters and jumped into the piles of loose hay my insides lurched when I stepped off into space and my wings spread as I soared through the air. Each leap was an experiment with chance but not a challenge to consequences. I see myself as an adult looking at the child jumping into space and think how lucky I was to jump thoughtlessly. I embraced the joy of flight and the excitement of landing and I did it for hours until I felt like stopping. There was nothing else I had to do. I was Saturday, the day made for jumping in the hay.

Clouds Over Pip's Pond

Clouds Over Pip's Pond 13.75 x 19.5

Clouds Over Pip's Pond

When Ron drops me off at the north farm, I step off the maintained gravel road onto the abandoned part of the fourth line and things fall away. The car gets tiny and disappears.

I can see where the road used to be, the sides cut into the hill in places. There is a track there now, with an apple tree bravely producing tiny apples to the side and there is coyote scat right in the middle of the path. Bees buzz and there is a settling in me as I readjust to being on my own.

I am walking down to Pip's pond. The road goes through pine forest, softly needled, and then into open grass. Big hills rise up on both sides and there is just me and the place together. As I walk around a curve I see big, moving, dark shapes up on the road ahead. What are they? I am uneasy then realise that they are wild turkeys, their big bodies on the road in front of me even though they know I am coming. They look at me for a long time and get bigger as I advance. They should be frightened of me but there is safety in numbers and there are least three of them. At the last minute they get off the road and linger own the embankment before disappearing.

Now I see Pip's pond, the ripples of the surface coming and going, the clouds reflecting on the surface. I lay a groundsheet on a horse-taily damp ground and draw. There is an exchange between me and the place I am in and the air is filled with pre-historic dragonflies, their dry wings making an astonishing racket in the sunshine. A chickadee is in a bush over my head, anxiously talking on and on. I draw the hypnotic, moving pattern on the surface of the water and I smell the sun on the mud and green plants at the water's edge. Suddenly I hear a crashing in the trees not far to my left, something is there and it's something big, breaking big branches. My brain goes into pre-historic fear. I don't wonder if it's a deer, I think of something big, powerful and unafraid.

The wild repossession of the countryside has flipped a primordial switch and there is a back bend in my imagination. Instead of a flock of wild turkeys, heavy in the branches, there is something huge, and menacing, a dark shape lurking, a bear, a monster. I am a puny figure in the wilderness, the balance of modern reason is tipped backwards in time to illogical fear. I am the first settlers wondering what might be hiding in the dark forest. There is only me in my sock feet sitting on the ground in the sunshine by the lapping water.

I pull myself back. I stand up and yell to tell whatever it is that I am there, and the crashing stops. Maybe whatever is is is still there but it makes no sound now. It lies down and pulls the leaves over its dark body.

I go back to my drawing. The dragonflies resume. They light on my drawing board, shimmering blue wings.

Cows with Lilies - SOLD

Cows

I am amazed by how big cows are. Enormous. When I see how huge they are in the middle, I marvel that their little, skinny ankles can support all that. When they walk, they sway leisurely side to side.

I know I view cows from a city girl perspective. I know they’re pretty dumb, but I like that. They view you without opinion, their direct gaze identifying you and maybe wondering what you might do. They have a wonderful steady-as-you-go attitude. They hardly ever hurry. They look at you softly and interestedly ( nothing much out of the ordinary ever happens in the field.) Their day is pretty straight forward. Eat, walk around, lie down, chew it over, get up, eat.

From an artist’s point of view I like their mass against the horizon, their shape on the green of the field. They are a pleasing mixture of angles and rounded curves.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, and I can hear them on the other side of the fence rhythmically ripping up the grass and chewing.

Dappled River With Cedar Tree 19.5 x 27.5

Fishpool 19.5x27.5

Hay Bale and Barn 19.5x27

Inside, Outside 19.5x27.5

Jean's House and Cedar Trees 19.5x27.5

Jet Trail

Maple Tree And Road 19.5x27.5

Meadow and Clover 19.5 x 27.5

Pine Branch

Little Jo 13.75 x 19.5

Reeds and Reflections 13.75 x 19.5

River With Rocks 19.5x27.5

River With Tangled branches 19.5x27.5

Summer Pond 13.75 x 19.5

Three Maple Trees and Canola 19.5 x 27.5

Canola Field and Maple Tree - SOLD

Rushing River (19.5x27.5)

Instructions For Making A Bridge

Wearing rubber boots, clomp along the cow path with your friend down to where the river comes from the long grass sunny meadow and enters the cedar woods. Upon arrival breathe in the earthy delicious cedar smell.

Taking a small stick walk into the deep woods waving the stick up and down in front of you to avoid walking face first into a spider web.

Now make your way along the bank of the river or wade in it talking of all manner of things with your friend, and find a spot to build a bridge. Take about an hour to do this. There should be a sturdy rock or two in the river for support.

Taking branches and bits of discarded cedar fence, make a bridge, constructing it with made up stories of who is crossing the river and why, weaving in small sticks and mermaid hair for tenuous strength. The constant music of the moving river is obviously a magic ingredient to your wonderful creation. Discuss at length how the bridge should be crossed. (First put your foot here, like this...)

Accept that your bridge is never really completed, since it is an evolving entity concerned with happenstance, movement and the physical vagaries of transition, balance, water force and mud.

Above all! Try not to be astonished when your Dad comes, and tries to follow your instructions to cross to the other side and can't do it because he is way too big. Too tall for the overhanging branches. Too heavy for the delicate construction. Adults turn out to be too big for young imaginations. Best to leave the crossing for fairies and squirrels, watched by water nymphs and fish, in the company of naiads, water spiders and ripples.

Pine Forest (19.5 x 27.5)

Pine Forest

Years ago somebody decided to plant Christmas trees here. I imagine it was a despairing decision, since the area was impossibly hilly, gravely and sandy.

There is not much human habitation around here now, but there was a hundred years ago. There is a ruined house that the family calls, "Divine Ruin", because a woman named Miss Devine lived there. When I was a kid it used to have floors inside and a roof, but every year something else gave up to rot and time and then collapsed, and now there are four walls made of stone waiting to fall down.

As the house fell down, the Christmas trees grew up. Now they are living telephone poles, each reaching up to a sky crossed with crows and turkey buzzards floating in circles above. The wind whishes through the branches high up and only the deer walk on the soft ground covered with a million needles.

I know that before Miss Devine lived here there were other buildings which are gone now. When we dig up the fields nearby, bits of plates and door knobs come up, and there are holes with vaguely rectangular shapes which are the old foundations of the ghost buildings. Lilacs mark their corners.

The wind has the voices of Miss Devine and these other people who had real lives long ago before me.

Time moves backwards here, the growth of the little Christmas trees remaking the forest where it once was - big, overgrown and wild, full of animals; coyotes at night and chickadees and squirrels in the day.

The grass swishes back to old farm houses and the warm sun on my skin heats the soil of past gardens. Miss Devine bakes an apple pie, and the smell of pine needles mixes with its' cooling on the window ledge.