Susan Tooke at Long Branch Studios

Three Totems, 5' x 4', acrylic on wood panel October in Cape Breton is spectacular... even when rainy and wet. Richard and I hiked each day, sketching, painting, and immersing ourselves in the landscape.  On one of the trails on Mount Grenville, St. Peter's a clearing in the woods held three ancient trunks in varying states of decay. They seemed to be watchers with a stoic dignity, at the edge of the forest; echos of the old-growth, with grasses and brambles forming a quilted covering for their roots, still anchoring them to the earth.

Near Shannon Falls  acrylic on canvas 36" x 48" Ravine acrylic on canvas 36" x 60" I am currently working on a series of woodland paintings.  The  complexity of the imagery, combining minimal sky, vertical forms, tangles of roots, soft carpets of moss challenge me to find the structure in the composition.  So often I have turned my back on the forests, heading instead for the shore and the action of the waves and wind, the ancient formations of rock molded by the elements.  Now I am returning to the coolness of the woods, full of mystery, decomposition and rebirth.

Tamarack, West Coast Newfoundland, acrylic on board, 4' x 5' The stunted and sun-bleached bones of tamarack litter the beaches on the west coast of Newfoundland.  Tortured branches create a visual testament to the tenacity of life along the North Atlantic shoreline, while colourful stones, tumbled by the sea, mix with driftwood and debris from nearby outports.  I am seeing a continued progression toward abstraction both with my choice of subjects and my interpretation of them.

Back to my painting after a Titanic interlude and the MASC conference for young illustrators and writers in Ottawa.  It is an enjoyable, if intense, process to paint for me: to interpret more than with optical accuracy, but to still retain the emotional connection to the landscape.   I am freed from the pedantic! Cape Breton Spring 48" x 60" acrylic on wood panel                                 

We had an exciting rehearsal today, with all of the pieces coming together... Lukas Pearse creating an electroacoustic score, real-time video processing.  Infra-red sensors allow for Veronique MacKenzie to enter the animations; her exquisite choreography touches the heart.  I am so happy to be part of this collaboration.  Tim Tracey was invaluable in his technical and artistic advice. The following are several stills from the animation/videos.

I am working on an exciting project with Veronique MacKenzie(dancer/choreographer and Lukas Pearse (sound design) for the 100th memorial of the sinking of the Titanic.  The image is from video of Veronique taken by Tim Tracey and further developed by me... It will be an exciting show.  Please come! " Large-scale projection pulls us into the haunting and tragic story of the maiden voyage of the Titanic with layers of animation and historical images. Combined with live dance performance and captured by infrared camera, they are woven into ghostly images using real-time video processing. This abstract narrative retells a story of courage and the ensuing darkness that overtook them on that fateful night. The immersive sound score draws into the emotion of the event and underwater imagery pulls us down to the final resting place and into the Depths of Sorrow. Depths of Sorrow: A multimedia performance with visual artist and animator Susan Tooke, audio/visual composer Lukas Pearse,