If you watch your child grow and develop over the course of a year, the changes are almost imperceptible to the daily eye. But if you're apart from that same child for that same year, the evolutions almost bowl you over.
Maureen Faulkner looked deeply into a year. She took every day as it came, and she made note of it. She did so for a full year - 366 days because this loop was a leap year - so the imperceptible was always in full view. The Prince George artist committed herself to do a painting per day for that entire trip around the sun, and she stuck to it.
It asks a lot to never miss a day of anything for a full year. You can feel compelled to go to the lake. You can get sick and not want to do anything at all but convalesce in bed. You can go on trips. You can get hit by the emotional wallop of tragedy, or distracted by jubilation. Every day are two of the hardest words to live up to.
What she could have done was crank out seven paintings on one day and call it quits for the rest of the week. She could have languished for a fortnight and binge-painted to catch up.
"Honestly, I didn't," she said. "I was helping Dave (her husband) with his work, I was teaching, we went travelling, I still had my life going on, but I promised myself I would do this every day, like gathering the eggs from the chickens. But sometimes it was three in the morning. I never missed one. I was absolutely faithful."
Faulkner is one of the city's long-standing stars of the visual arts world. Painting, installation pieces, multimedia, she does it all (even music). This yearlong project exposed yet another side of her creativity. Along with the daily painting was attached a daily poem.
"I've always been in the closet about that," she said. "But I am an avid reader. I did teach high school English which required me to learn about the processes of writing. I took a writing course from (bestselling B.C. poet) Susan Musgrave in Wells, and she really taught me a lot about word economy and expressing myself with words in much the same way I express myself through visual art."
She said the paintings and the poems were created the same way: stream of consciousness, in one draft.
Faulkner has been a locally featured artist at the Two Rivers Gallery since the day the city's premier art exhibition space opened. With two forms of art (visual and literary) and an ambitious theme all in one initiative, the gallery welcomed her back with open walls. The year-long painting/poem project is now on exhibit in their Rustad Galleria. There wasn't space for all 366 works of art (not all of them are paintings) so an emblematic 24 have been put on display with a television screen scrolling through the entire calendar of the daily creations.
Assistant curator Meghan Hunter-Gauthier said there were even more parameters self-imposed by Faulkner, and they are subtly noticeable in the show.
They named the exhibition Cultivating Habit.
"Before beginning the project, Faulkner determined that the size of her paintings would increase by an inch in both length and width each month, Hunter Gauthier said. "When developing her paintings and writing Faulkner utilized a stream of consciousness technique and would not premeditate her creations. Often, certain subjects or topics are revisited with multiple paintings. Viewing the body of work in its entirety, as presented on the television screen, reveals the interconnections and sub-series that weave themselves throughout this body of work."
As Faulkner created her daily art, she would add to the accountability of it by posting the progress on social media. She also used those communication channels to spark audience interaction. At Faulkner's urging, people sent her random items - they were small and flat by request - which got incorporated into the art.
"Faulkner's methodology infuses her project with a high level of transparency," Hunter-Gauthier said. "Often the work habits of visual artists are viewed as mysterious to those who do not actively engage in the discipline. Part of the reason for this has to do with the perception of the artist as genius - a Renaissance ideology that defines the artist as a creative force that transcends theory, rules, and even the artwork itself. This view of artists feeds into the myth that art making is purely intrinsic, rather than a skill that requires practice. Faulkner's project counters this ideology, emphasizing work routine and artistic development."
There is still work to be done. Cultivating Habit generated a substantial body of sequential art. It's a package. With that package comes a corresponding collection of poetry, also sequential. Also, the art has been professionally photographed by Birgit Zorzi. It could become a new-media project, a book, an expandable exhibit, or more.
The resonance of this effort is indirect as well. She said "I felt the changes within me over the year" as her skills inevitably developed, her artistic eye for subject got honed, and her discipline became matter of daily fact. These are the building blocks for better art in her future than any one project has ever enabled before.
"As much as this project is a work of art, it is also a personal and professional exercise in commitment, daily reflection, and communication," said Hunter-Gauthier. "Cultivating Habit celebrates the culmination of an extensive project filled with artistic growth and personal insight. Elements of this project, such as social media engagement and automatic writing, lead Faulkner outside of her comfort zones and allowed her to practice new skills. Developing paintings in an unplanned, automatic fashion challenged the artist creatively."
All this speaks of the process, but then there are the symbolic results, the imbedded commentary, the visual entendres, the source material underpinning the final renderings. Faulkner is not a realist artist, she is a wordless storyteller (who happens, in this case, to also include some carefully chosen words).
The story of Cultivating Habit is told at the Rustad Galleria within Two Rivers Gallery until May 6.
