Elizabeth Popham – The Food Shop 2024
Elizabeth Popham Micro-landscapes
The Food Shop
374 Water Street, Peterborough
705-775-7467
ptbofoodshop.com
instagram.com/ptbofoodshop
facebook.com/ptbofoodshop
Hours
Mon to Fri: 9:30 am to 6 pm
Sat: 10 am to 5 pm
Sun: Closed
Reception
First Friday Ptbo
Friday, April 5
5 pm to 9 pm
Elizabeth Popham
bethpopham@gmail.com
elizabethpophamfineart.ca
instagram.com/bethpopham
facebook.com/beth.popham.9
Micro-landscapes
I have recently circled back to the visual arts after a career focused on words — teaching Renaissance and Canadian literature in Alberta, Arizona and Newfoundland, and most recently, at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
Although I am also a painter, photography has been essential to my re-immersion in the realm of the visual, in long walks with my camera and my subsequent experiments with the processing of these images.
Looking out to the horizon in this beautiful natural environment is a gift to any artist. But I enjoy shifting focus to the beauty that resides along the edge of the trail — to what I call “micro-landscapes” — remembering William Blake’s hope that we retain the ability to “see heaven in a wildflower, and eternity in a grain of sand.” And so for the past four years, I have been engaged in a project of exploration of the smaller things we too often ignore. This project began with photography, and continues to be grounded there. But it has expanded into painting (often with palette knife) and other media, including block printing. At their most extreme, whether on canvas or in photographic images, my “micro-landscapes” evolve into "natural abstracts": extreme close-ups of natural objects in which the subject threatens to be lost and the focus shifts to pattern — an intricate arrangement of shape, line, colour and light.
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