Create

2026

Medium: collaborative mixed media collage with scratched plexi, watercolours, oil paint, acrylic paint, found objects, ink

Dimensions: 34.5 x 29 cm

Create began as an image on clear plexiglas of a hand in the act of painting; the rest was a clean slate, the question of what the hand would create as yet unanswered. It was an invitation to my collabor-ators to play, experiment, and make meaning. The final answer to the question is a mysterious, beautiful, delicately layered meditation on memory and loss.

~ Loretta Paoli

Loretta: the original drawing, (presented as a right hand) was made using oil paint rubbed into scratched and sanded image on clear plexigas. It's a continuation of a technique i've been using for many years, and also references a recent series of installations I made (Reach), honouring women and the work they do with their hands. Here, I represented my own hand and work.

(In this process image, the plexi is leaning on a plastic cup. When the plexi is laid flat against a surface, the image creates a shadow of itself.)

Anne:

Chrystene:

Laura: I found this piece beautiful, but perplexing and needed to live with it for a while before working on it. After two weeks, an idea came. It seemed that the hand holding the paintbrush was painting out the faces of the girls in the archive photograph, erasing their identity. It could be seen as the “hand of time” then. From Anne’s information, the photo came from the archives in Kamloops, so I went online to research possible clues. I found similar photos of groups of girls in white that were confirmation celebrations. I imagined the girls growing close, creating bonds and then losing touch if the family moves away. As time passed, I imagined an elderly woman remembering her closest friend, wondering what her life had been like. I used a family locket that had been my mother's and did a rubbing of it on rice paper. I enhanced it with paint to suggest the enameled flower design on the locket. The idea here was to give substance to the complex scenario playing out in my imagination. The woman might have a photo of her friend in the locket. I adhered the drawing to the backing paper, so it would be seen through plexiglass. The background words represent her musings, “Who did you become?” I mailed it to Sheila.

Sheila: When this piece arrived there were things in the package that seemed like extras, so I decided to use them, just wasn't sure how.

I decided to spraypaint two trees of life in the background, then take the plexiglass and attach it over the image. I drilled holes down each side and the corners to create a secure way to hold the plexiglass in place and added copper washers to enhance the sides. Now it is permanently protected.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse