Susan Tooke at Long Branch Studios

The Barrens, Mt. Uniacke, acrylic on canvas, 4' x 4' The parklands of the Mount Uniacke Estate include trails through Acadian forest, wetlands and the barrens.  The trails wind through woodlands, sometimes with deep undergrowth.  However, along the Barrens Trail the woods are dominated by red spruce.  The survivors reach above the unsuccessful fallen trees whose trunks and branches create a pattern of white bones across the forest floor.

installation shot of "Woodlands" at Gallery Page and Strange    Visual Viewpoints: Tooke invites viewers to Woodlands show the Chronicle Herald, Arts and Life, September 18, 2013 - 5:41pm  BY ELISSA BARNARD ARTS REPORTER I have been to Hemlock Ravine, but I have never seen it the way  Halifax artist  Susan Tooke does. Her woods teem in colour and line in a cheerful and exciting new  show, Woodlands,  at Gallery Page  and Strange at 1869 Granville St.  in Halifax until Sept. 27. The side of each wood panel is painted in the acrylic colour — red,  or teal, or royal  blue or green —  that will dominate the background  of each image.  With eye-popping colour, outlines and a visceral  energy in her lines and abstracted  forms, Tooke  continues to create  an exalted experience of the land that she first  introduced in her  show,  Transformation, two years ...

Back to elm street studio. Summer has lots of distractions.  It is a time for gathering ideas, working in the garden, traveling, hiking, socializing.   Ideas from Shannon Falls, BC have stuck with me... Here is the latest work from the studio.

Bog Trail, Cape Breton Lately, I have been working on paper, creating pieces for the Paper show at Gallery Page and Strange.  The show opens on Friday, February 15, 6-8 p.m.  To quote the gallery: "This exhibition is focusing on paper. We bring elements of the artists studio into the gallery so you can see parts of the process too. Sketch books and initial works on paper are on display to give you a sense of what really lies behind the artworks that you love. Not only is it fascinating to see the history of a work of art, it is beautiful. This exhibition is fantastic for a new collector. Works on paper will be available and often cost significantly less than a fully realized canvas. Work on paper in a private collection loans a sense of sophistication and deeper appreciation of what it is an artist does." Hope to see you there!

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.

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                                 

Kej Woodland (acrylic on canvas, 36"x 60") interprets the damp mossy woods of October in Nova Scotia. The patterns of the leaves drift across the trunks of uprooted trees, the ferns turn golden with the shorter days, and grasses lose the strength to stand upright at the end of the growing season.

Another spot on the High Head hike is this incredible cove, filled with rocks tumbled into spheres by the tide.  As the tide rises, a spout of water is forced through the granite formations, lending itself to be christened by Richard and me as Spittle Cove.  It is also the location of one of my early paintings entitled "Fifteen", after my daughter, Amy, who posed as a figure in the landscape.  27 years separate these two paintings.

One of my favourite hikes is the High Head Trail, Lower Prospect, NS. Near the beginning of the hike, a stream courses through rocks, just stepping stones at high tide, but as seen here at low tide, a trickle of water is trapped until the surge of the next tide releases it. Inlet at High Head, acrylic on wood panel, 36" x 48"

A waterfall within a damp ravine of the rainforest in Goldstream Provincial Park, BC, I worked from a study done on site.  By further simplifying and abstracting the image, I drew the lines of movement and the exaggerated angles formed as rock and trees collapse toward the forest floor.

A lily pond at midsummer:  how do you paint this subject without the cloying sweetness that florals often have, and yet maintain the feeling of 'pond'?  The dominant blue green suggests a gentler landscape; in the stillness of dawn wet grasses and lily pads balance in damp air and pond water.

The south shore of Nova Scotia -- the spruce trees clinging to the rocky ground, the tidal pools left behind amid the worn granite of the shoreline.  My solo exhibition at Gallery Page and Strange continues through August 26.

Patterns formed in rock stressed by the elements,  the Nova Scotian South Shore is pounded by the North Atlantic. In various stages of deconstruction, and construction, the landscape is most dramatic where sky, sea and earth meet.

My trip to Sable, and friendship with Zoe Lucas has moved my studio painting into fresh ground with room for imagination and experimentation.  Discovering the feeling of a place, and examining my own emotional response while experiencing an environment has led me to a new way of seeing the world. 

Richard and I spent a week on Sable Island in August, 2009.  While there, we spent all of our time painting the landscape en plein air.  This was to be a pivotal experience for me.. I was pressed to find a way of expressing the landscape in a more immediate way.  Working on illustrations for Free as the Wind, written by Jamie Bastedo, Red Deer Press, I came to know Zoe Lucas.  Her friendship has opened up the world of Sable Island to me, and I am grateful for this.

Large canvases are crowding the studio.  Enormous skies, open views are demanding space.  So much action above affecting the earth, the earth reflects the activity in the sky, the sea pulling back and rushing in--the Fundy shore near Great Village, Nova Scotia.

When I was in Goose Bay, Labrador, at the Arts Festival, I did get out briefly into the country.  The red canoe, stashed above the tideline, the driftwood angled against the solitary stone, the November snow and far shore made a lasting impression.  The silence of winter.

My latest in expressive landscape painting.  The dynamic movement of the tides in the Bay of Fundy near Great Village, Nova Scotia is a subject of epic proportions.  The sky and the water of the bay are constantly changing with the ebb and flow of the ocean as it is funneled into the valleys of the stream beds and rivers.  The challenge is to paint this energy.

Richard and I were driving on the highway, when we decided to take the back roads.  The land was covered with snow, the stubble poking through the icy crust.  An isolated farmhouse stood on the hill against a late afternoon grey sky.  There was something iconic about it as it stood on its pedestal of last summer's cornrows. As I painted, the feeling of the land and enormous sky enveloped me.  I was drawn into the universe by the mystery surrounding the old homestead.