When Crystalynn Tarr sets out to paint, she likes to get her hands dirty.
Not only is the Community Arts Council's 2015-16 artist-in-resident a celebrated painter, she is one of the only artists who goes out into nature and obtains the rocks and dirt she needs to make her own paint, the way it was done prehistorically.
So when Tarr paints her community, it's literal. The Two Rivers Gallery is giving Tarr her first solo exhibition in this city starting on Thursday night. Memoryscape: Spiritual Landscapes has already toured to other towns in the region, and now it gets its spotlight in its place of origin, where the colours on the canvas were actually mined.
"It makes writing the artist's statement a lot easier," Tarr said of the unique lengths she goes to to make paint then use it for her artwork. "When someone asks me to describe my process, I feel like I'm not making up fluff, I really have a lot to say to explain how I do it. I just say what I do, and people find it interesting."
That included the gallery's curatorial staff.
"In her paintings Tarr seeks to express the wonder of nature, specifically the places she frequented when she was young," said Myrian Le Lan, who co-curated the exhibition with Maeve Hanna. "All subjects are regional landmarks filled with a lifetime of memories. Memoryscape seeks to explore Tarr's investigation of place in the north through her use of locally gathered soil that she utilizes to make the very paint she paints with. Tying the land so directly to her work in this manner, Tarr creates another view of society where, through pictorial description, memory is embedded and, as in the Central Arctic where the Inuit were able to return to a seasonal house or village year after year simply by following their memories, stories or songs, Tarr's paintings recreate her memoryscape of her experience of the north."
Some of the paint is crafted from hillsides spotted while driving on highways, or on hunting trips she goes on to far-flung corners of the region. She scopes the landscape for signs of useful colours the way a geologist looks for telltale mineralization. But some of it comes from common spots right inside the city, like the underpass from the highway into the Westgate Plaza shopping area. In the art world, only potters looking for clay have a similar connection to the earth.
"I teach a workshop that goes with the exhibition," Tarr said. Although hers is the oldest painters' technique known to art, in the age of paint in pucks and tubes, almost no one anymore is aware of their own abilities to create paint then paint creations.
"In the other towns where the exhibition was held, I was able to take groups out to collect the right dirt a lot more easily. It's winter now. So I'll bring the dirt already in bags, and I can talk about all this buckety stuff I'm doing," she said, gesturing to a collection of pails at her Community Arts Council studio. "We will prepare the paints from the stuff I bring in, but I'll also talk a lot about where to look and what to look for."
She is even preparing a colour-coded map of where she sources different paint material around the region, province and into Alberta.
The exhibition also has a commemorative book that shows the images, has a detailed written text, and, as Christmas approaches, makes for a standalone document good for home entertainment and information for the art lover in your life. It makes Le Lan, Hanna and Tarr into authors.
The exhibition's appearance in Mackenzie, McBride, Valemount and now Prince George was all in partnership with the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George.
The exhibition opens on Thursday night with an artist's talk by Tarr and a reception starting at 7:30. It is free to attend.
The workshop on how to obtain material and make your own soil-based paints will take place the first two Saturdays in December from 9 a.m. - noon. Call the gallery for more information. If it is full, a wait-list will be compiled.
