When I first planned to do this painting, I pictured some intricate multi-media piece that touched on all of the major threads from my learning. It would have the image of some journey, show art technique moving from paint by number to individual, incorporate some of the lacemaking or handweaving, and connect to knowledge and science through botany, grasslands, and beauty.

I had a lot of sketches for a concept, some I like a lot, but they just wouldn’t come together. I’d tweak them or make a new one as I finished a reading or did some reflecting, but nothing was working. Finally, I think in part because of reading Braiding Sweetgrass, I tried to take a broader and more grounded view of my learning in the last few months. I thought about what the point was really and what I wanted to share. I realised that my original concept was too convoluted for one painting, any one idea had merit but not together.

There was a lot of really valuable learning I did this semester but not everything needs to be shown in this one product. Through both the readings, assignments, and lecture content I’ve gained a better understanding of the value gained through learning beyond what you can report at the end. RW Kimmerer discusses trusting the learning of others and valuing their journey on top of what they can state on demand. So, in light of the pre-existing journaling, discussions, and presentations, I’m going to distil my main thought into a simple scene.

I decided to focus my piece on my own experience when I try to feel connection to my homeland, and how I interpret it as both a scientist and a local.  I’ve lived in Saskatoon pretty well all my life but spent my summers at an old cabin by a small lake with my family. We knew most of the people there, and who are still there, but the park was large enough you could always find quiet. It was so far out of the way it didn’t even have radio and almost no one bothered to keep track of time. To occupy myself under the long summer sun I would read, listen to birds on our deck, or just wade in the water for hours.

That place is peace to me, I always feel safe. I knew the people, the trees, the weather, and could identify most happenings just by sound. Looking back, I’m so lucky to have gotten to know a place so intimately and feel so certain about where I was. What I learned from Kimmerer was that by being there I was also part of what made that place what it was. That quiet, unshakeable connection is still powerful in my life. I cannot go as often as I could as a child; little has changed there, little that mattered at least.

I painted the view from an empty hill, far but not isolated from people. The water is calm reflecting the gently pink dusk that lies opposite the blazing sunset. In the foreground is the colourful, long, uncultivated grasses which have been trodden on and bent. My intention was to place the viewer in the scene, showing were their body has been to sit and enjoy this view. Because humans are from the earth like everything else, and there is effect and interaction reciprocally between us and the earth. This can be loving and positive if we strive to make it so.

I’ve included the colours of some native grasses beyond green and I also did my best to stylise Calamagrostis canadensis, or Bluejoint Reed grass, which is an eye-catching native of Saskatchewan. I chose grass not only because it grows well, or better, with such disturbance but because of its importance to us here generally, and my own career personally. It’s the ‘bedrock’ of our economy now, the sustenance for the bison then, and the original coloniser following the glaciers which flattened Saskatchewan in the first place.

I’m lucky to have had the experiences I did, and privileged that my family was able to come here, stay there, and share all of our history with me. These threads shape who we are, our community, and our sense of self. These same threads in the first peoples of this land were deliberately torn apart through systemic government action and individual acts of oppression. However, those threads are not all broken or lost. There is so much to be gained by valuing the land, our relationships, and our journeys to support our students in weaving their own sense of connection and peace as they live their lives. I cannot handout these things, but I hope that by showing gratitude to that place and sharing my experience through art I can help some how.