Many thanks to the Cabot Trail Writer's Festival for the challenge and the opportunity to have my work on display at their event.
Title: “Look at me - quatgathoma”
Inspired
by the book “Elle” by Douglas Glover
Artist:
Teena Marie Fancey
Medium:
acrylic on wood
Size:
8”W x 10”L
Douglas Glover’s book “Elle”
left a very visual impression on me, as did the character. Marguerite is a young 16th Century
French noblewoman who is forcibly marooned on a desolate island at the mouth of
the St. Lawrence in the Strait of Belle Isle with her lover, old nursemaid and
an odd and lacking assortment of supplies. She is a quick witted, intellectual
with a taste for sex and the grotesque and narrates her memoir in a ribald and
thoughtful fashion. In it she recounts her life, abandonment, quest for
survival and coming of age. She describes for us her observations, vivid dreams
and spiritual connections to the wildness of the land and its inhabitants as
well as the hard lessons she quickly learns as the Eurocentric misconceptions of
the Colonists of her time have left her completely unprepared for her
encounters in the wilds of the New World, Canada.
I’ve chosen to depict our
protagonist in her barren surroundings. Above her is a black and clouded sky.
She appears to be mildly amused at her predicament and slightly bored or put
out as she waits for rescue or, perhaps, the moment when she will transform,
rise up like a bear and show us the wild heart that Canada has given her.
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