Aspiring to the Landscape: On Painting and the Subject of Nature

Peter Harmathy teaches secondary-school fine arts in Barrie, Ontario.

Ottawa-based Petra Halkes is an independent curator, painter, and art
critic who has published numerous reviews and articles on contemporary
art in Border Crossings and Canadian Art and Parachute, among other
periodicals.

Through the works of four Canadian artists (all painters), Halkes
treads the breadth and depth of art history to help us perceive the
genre’s continuing impact on contemporary postmodern art. All four
painters embody some reference to early traditions: Wanda Koop and the
Victorian panorama; Susan Feindel and fresco technique; Eleanor Bond and
Stephen Hutchings and Romantic imagery. All four approach the landscape
with a critical but not derisive eye as they attempt to open up new ways
of seeing nature from a 21st-century viewpoint.

It is a viewpoint barraged by multiple codings, appropriation, and the
discourse of thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida,
Jean-Francois Leotard, and Lacan, to name but a few. In the end, the
works of these four artists allow a questioning and evaluation of the
landscape tradition, and in particular the cultural baggage with which
nature has been burdened. Halkes, without having ever seen the paintings
(except through the black-and-white and colour images featured in this
book), provides a critical analysis of the landscape tradition to its
current state through the wondrous works and interpretations of Koop,
Feindel, Bond, and Hutchings.

This is not a book for the layperson. It is filled with art lingo for
those familiar with contemporary art discourse. The 12 pages of
footnotes will not suffice to educate the amateur. However, it is a
one-of-a-kind overview of Canadian landscape art and its current trends.
Where did we come from? Where are we headed? These are questions that
are bravely and successfully addressed in Aspiring to the Landscape.