Artist Statement and Bio
STATEMENT
Sometimes I just want to tear my hair out when I think about what is happening to our natural world. I feel
helpless. What will happen if we don’t do something? Oddly, I find a weird comfort in thinking about how a
place like Toronto would look if all the people disappeared. In geological time human tenure is insignificant.
The natural world would re-establish its authority. Lost species and our current moribund beauty would be replaced with
something fresh and new.
Deciding to make a painting about the landscape during the Anthropocene is complicated. It is impossible to ignore
Landscape as the nexus of political forces, fuel economics, and indigenous rights. Artistic tradition uses the landscape
to represent the sublime. But I also see the landscape, certainly on the west coast, as part of the everyday. In
Vancouver a concrete factory is located at the edge of the ocean. Painting the landscape is fraught with conflict before
I make a mark.
Living where I do on the western edge of the continent, and surrounded by natural beauty, I crave a strong unmediated
experience with nature. But it is a struggle. My responses are filtered by my physical body (my foot is uncomfortable, I
have a cold), my mind (unwanted thoughts appear) and the political reality of the world around me (climate migration).
Is there something in my nature that restricts my ability to be one with the landscape? Is this just me or is it familiar
to others?
I began my Landscape as a Marker of Time paintings in 2021 with the idea of exploring the feeling of separation from
the beauty of nature. Instead, they have become a documentation of my slow acceptance that a climate transformation
is happening. And I notice that these changes are becoming part of our natural beauty. Pollutants in the air result in
more colourful sunsets for example.
These paintings and the accompanying transition in my thinking have led to the start of a new body of work. Looking at
the landscape in the precarious now.
“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer
ARTIST BIO
Raised in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty One Territory) Trish Shwart is currently based on Lkwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ Territories (Victoria, BC). She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a gold medal and from the Emily Carr College of Art with the Helen Pitt Graduate Award.
She is interested in the distance we feel from the otherness of the beauty of nature and the way in which something in our human nature prevents us from being at one with the beauty of the natural world.
Since 2019 Shwart has participated in 3 two-person shows exploring the collaborative process. With the long landscape paintings, Shwart incorporates the lessons about trust and risk gained from those experiences. These paintings integrate possibilities and anxieties while exploring our senses, state of mind, and personal associations.