LA LUMIÈRE ET LA BRUME / LIGHT AND FOG
I was invited to be an Artist in Residence at the Reford Gardens in Grand-Métis, Québec in July 2023 by curator Hélène Samson.
Samson has a particular interest in history and photography having been the Curator of the Photography Collection at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal for 16 years. She retired in June 2022 and continues to curate exhibitions and write about photography.
During the residency, I had the opportunity to experience the landscape and the community that had inspired the artistic life of watercolourist Anna Lois Dawson Harrington in the late 1890s.
Anna Lois was the daughter of Sir John William Dawson, a renowned geologist and paleontologist.
Dawson was the principal of McGill University as well as a professor of geology from 1855 to 1893.
She lived in Montreal, and spent her summers in Métis with her ever growing family,
nine children in all.
In the 1890s Little Métis, today known as Métis-sur-Mer, began to be a thriving summer community with many Anglophones vacationing on the rugged shores of the mighty St. Lawrence River, a welcome change from city life.
During my residency, the weather was cloudy, changeable, often a mist hanging over the river in the morning and in the evening. These were not summer temperatures. Rarely was the sky bright summer blue with billowing white clouds.
There was time for walks on the beach and collecting rocks and shells, the wild roses and lupines in full flourish. I found inspiration in the same landscape that had inspired Anna Lois so many years ago.
I explored the landscape with my camera, searching for the poetry.
And I began to write.
Anna Lois leaves a legacy of over 200 watercolours inspired by the summer landscape she experienced so intimately. Her watercolours are today part of the permanent collection of the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal.
2024
Exhibitions
LA LUMIERE ET LA BRUME / LIGHT AND FOG, Reford Gardens, Grand-Métis, Québec, 16 June - 6 October 2024
Rencontres internationales de la photographie en Gaspésie, Québec, September 2024
Press
Les nouvelles expositions des Jardins de Métis célèbrent le territoire, Le Soleil, 26 June 2024
Following in Anna Lois Harrington's footsteps in "Little Métis", Quebec AM with Julia Caron, CBC, 21 June 2024
Installation View: LA LUMIERE ET LA BRUME / LIGHT AND FOG, Reford Gardens, Grand-Métis, Québec, 2024. Curated by Hélène Samson. Photo: Marjelaine Sylvestre
Anna Lois Dawson Harrington