Artist statement

“Visible Mending” is a series of watercolour paintings through which I’ve been contemplating the project of Reconciliation. I began by cutting squares, measuring one inch by one inch, out of my paintings before mending them, exposing spaces and deep red watercolour underneath.

The cutouts are meant to invoke the idea of taking more than was offered (‘give an inch and they’ll take a mile’), as settlers did when they took land from Indigenous populations in Canada. The sewing suggests the slow and sometimes difficult work of repair. By stitching the landscape back together visibly, and slightly askew, I’m acknowledging that the repairs cannot erase history and its ugliness but will instead be part of creating something new.

There is hope in repair, and a look towards the future. The sewing threads are black and red, the dark ones both blending with shadows in the landscape and reminding us of the shameful history of Canada’s treatment of its Indigenous population, while the blood red invokes all the blood spilled. Stitches travel down the painting, as if blood runs from the open cuts in the landscape, again suggesting the tremendous difficulty of healing and repair. In each painting, the sky remains as it was, unstitched and untouched by all these human activities, a witness to the past as well as to a hopeful future of healing and reconciliation.

As a landscape painter, I care deeply for the natural spaces in which I find inspiration, and I believe that love for our environment is a passionately felt, shared experience that may help form a hopeful way forward together.

About the artist

Tanya Fenkell is a Canadian artist and writer whose work focuses on solitary spaces in the natural world. She holds a BA in English Literature from McGill University, an MA in English and an MIS from the University of Toronto.

She has spent many years raising three sons, prior to which she worked as a Photo Librarian at The Globe and Mail and later as co-owner/designer of Cloud Cashmere, a line of ethically-made knits. Tanya’s creative development included study and practice of various arts and fibre-related crafts, such as knitting, drawing, sewing, embroidery and bookbinding; she has also been a knitting instructor. The solitude and isolation specific to raising small children allowed her to delve deeply into watercolour (so portable and quick-drying), her favourite medium for her moody landscapes and figures.

Tanya exhibits her art regularly in Ontario and her poetry has been published in various small journals. Tanya lives in Toronto with her family and spends as much time as she can on Baptiste Lake, a main source of inspiration for her tranquil, calming paintings. Tanya’s first solo show, Emotional Landscapes, was mounted at the Art Gallery of Bancroft in May of 2022.