Arm’s Length: the Northwest Arm and the Artist

An exhibition titled Arm’s Length: the Northwest Arm and the Artist opens today at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. I’m honoured to be part of this show and grateful to curator Dianne O’Neill for including my piece, Point Pleasant Pilaster, 2007, which is in the permanent collection of the AGNS. The exhibition runs from March 28 to September 27, 2015. Arm’s Length is a historical exhibition, and even though I only lived in Halifax for two years (from 2006 to 2008), I have become part of its history. The city’s resonance stays with me still, and Point Pleasant Park remains especially poignant and significant to me as a symbol of hope, community and strength.

O’Neill comments on the special relationship that has long existed, and continues to exist, between the Northwest Arm and the artist: “Peninsular Halifax is separated from the mainland by a narrow inlet of the sea whose name has varied – We’kwaltijk, Hawk’s or Sandwich River, Northwest Arm – but whatever its name the Arm has always attracted artists…Topographical, picturesque, and realistic; impressionist, expressionist, or abstract: artists have revealed the Arm with intelligence and passion as the decades rolled by and artistic expectations changed.” Thank you to Dianne O’Neill, Sandra Alfoldy, and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.