Peturson’s ‘Small Wonders’ show big talent

By Michael Riley, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Art Gallery of Bancroft had the opening night for Laura Peturson's “Small Wonders” art exhibit on Oct. 2. The show is sponsored by Glenda and Jean Menard and Jocelyne and Michael Moran. For more information about Peturson and her work, go to www.laurapeturson.com or email petursonlaura@gmail.com. Peturson and artist and the evening's emcee Molly Moldovan comment to The Bancroft Times about this art opening. 

Northern Ontario based artist Peturson is an artist who specializes in printmaking, drawing and painting. According to her website, “her large-scale print-based installations comprised of woodcut, linocut and papercut wheatpastes have been presented in solo exhibitions at Alberta Printmakers Gallery in Calgary, Station Gallery in Whitby, and Galerie Atelier Circulaire in Montreal. In addition to exhibiting widely in Canada, and international venues, Peturson has created murals and public art projects in several Ontario cities, including Sudbury, North Bay, and Port Burwell. Her work is narrative and figurative, focusing on the lives of girls and women, and drawing upon traditions from the Golden Age of Illustration and engaging with references from literature and visual art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.” In addition to her art, Peturson is also an associate professor in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Nipissing University, where she teaches courses in drawing, painting, and printmaking.

From her artist statement on her exhibit at the AGB, Peturson says here work focuses on the ways that the small domestic spaces we inhabit as children form our identity and our conception of our place in relation to family, geography, and nature. 

“I construct narratives that explore the experiences and perspectives of children in dynamic relationships between their environments and family members. My prints evoke the complexity of children's inner lives, blending documentary and fiction. While the scenes are often based on specific stories and events, I aim to suggest open narratives and capture

an overall sensation or atmosphere that is both familiar and unsettling. My process involves constant observational sketching of my children, study of historical work, and the construction of fictional compositions drawn from my memories of childhood. The distinct landscape of my daily life figures prominently in my prints. I live and work just outside North Bay, a city on the cusp of Northern Ontario, the self-described “gateway” between south and north. The idea of a location at the edge resonates with my experience of childhood, and my prints explore the edge between isolation and family, between peril and safety. The body of work titled Small Wonders is comprised of prints created using multi-block or reductive relief technique. Each colour represents a different layer carved into a linocut block and printed over previous colours and under subsequent ones. The method of simplifying drawings into layers of relief carving helps to cultivate a pared down, nostalgic character and imbue the scenes with a sense of atmosphere,” she says. 

Peturson told The Bancroft Times on Sept. 1 that she loved to draw as a kid and visited museums and galleries with her family. 

“I studied art at university (I did my BFA at York University and my MFA at the New York Academy of Art) and have had various jobs in the arts and culture sector. I think daily sketchbook drawing is the clearest line from doing art as kid through to adulthood. Although I work in different media and formats now, keeping a sketchbook hasn't changed much through my life, although I'm faster and less precious about drawing (less concerned with how it looks) than when I was younger. Now, I think the act of drawing is valuable in itself as a way of focusing attention and working out ideas visually,” she says. 

Growing up, Peturson says she admired a vast range of historical artists including John Singer Sargent, Kathe Kollwitz, and Francisco de Goya. 

“The artist most like a mentor to me is Canadian painter Dennis Geden. Dennis was the chair of the Fine Arts program at Nipissing University when I first started teaching in 2007. I always loved his work, and the way he created narrative compositions that were informed by history, place, and personal content. I also loved the strange and sometimes unsettling atmosphere in his paintings. Dennis taught me a lot about working with students and advocating for the arts program within the university,” she says. 

Peturson says that most of the artworks in the “Small Wonders” exhibit are linocut prints on paper. 

“After working out an idea in my sketchbook, I make drawings on blocks where the non-image areas are carved away with gouges and knives, and the raised surface is rolled with ink. The prints in the show have many layers, some printed from the same block and some using multiple blocks. The mural in the exhibition is also comprised of linocut prints. In that case, the blocks are very large in scale and are printed onto thin paper and cut out with a pen knife. While I paint with acrylic directly onto the gallery wall, I can make all the block-printed components in advance and layer them onto the wall with wheatpaste. At the end of the exhibition, all the prints are removed like wallpaper – by wetting the wall and peeling them off. They get destroyed in the process, so each mural I make is a one-time experience,” she says. 

Rarely thinking about inspiration in art making, Peturson says that art is more like a daily practice as part of being a thinking and feeling person in the world. 

“I document aspects of my life, I play with forms and images and I draw when I visit museums. I find ideas come to me through working, rather than waiting for inspiration,” she says. 

Peturson says she's done several permanent outdoor murals in different communities and she finds working onsite outdoors to be demanding. 

“I did a mural on a very large scale housing complex in Sudbury, Ontario, and it was a challenge to maintain a coherent sense of the composition working up close on a scissor lift in changeable weather. The clearly defined timeline of creating a mural is one of the things that makes it challenging. With studio work, you can put something down and come back to it after working on something else, whereas the development of a mural has strict parameters of time. The mural in this show had an installation window of 12-hours over two days,” she says. 

As to how “Small Wonders” came to be, Peturson says that these small format, traditional block prints on paper are something she makes continuously between larger scale installation projects and murals. 

“'Small Wonders' is a collection from prints made across several years, that share a similar sense of nostalgic atmosphere and feel like they're different scenes from the same world. They blend fiction with reality and combine elements drawn from life with memory and imagination. The title ‘Small Wonders' references beauty in the mundane, but also the depth and complexity of children's inner lives,” she says. 

Peturson says that local people may feel that the places and landscapes in “Small Wonders” are familiar to them. 

“I hope viewers remember the sense of aimless exploration from childhood and a connection to the outdoors or are reminded of dynamics within their own families. I also hope viewers leave with curiosity about the process of printmaking; artists who visit may be interested in the potential to use the medium in their own work,” she says. 

A work called “Still Afternoon” is one of Peturson's favourite pieces from the “Small Wonders” exhibit. 

“It's the print most directly drawn from my children in a specific place. I like it because the composition is pared down to minimal information, which seemed to fit with the atmosphere of idle peace I sought to capture,” she says. 

Moldovan said on Sept. 2 that she was very much looking forward to the evening's exhibit opening from Peturson. 

“My favourite piece is most definitely the mural, which creates a beautifully immersive atmosphere for the other works in the exhibition. The mural takes us into the playful and imaginative world of childhood, filled with adventure and possibility,” she says. 

Moldovan told The Bancroft Times that she really enjoyed the opening, the attendees were really engaging with the work and with Peturson.  

“I have been dealing with her at a distance over the past two years - last night was the first time that we actually met.   She is a lovely person and a multi-talented artist.  There was a larger than usual number of young people in attendance, and every one of them seemed truly engaged by the work, as well.  I found it all quite educational, as well - I've never tried block printing, and had no idea how fraught the process could be.   I could see how impressed the artists who had actually tried it were by the scale of Laura's work. Not just the mural, which was in itself a huge endeavor, but also the complexity - the number of   layers in each of her prints requires a very rigourous skill to ensure that each layer is perfectly placed over the previous layer or ‘register.' What stood out for me most was the many comments from attendees to the effect that Laura's work evoked memories of their own, long-past childhoods and feelings of nostalgia for the different world that was then. When children played in a less constructed and constrained landscape, their imaginations running free with not a smartphone or tablet to be seen,” she says. 

Peturson told The Bancroft Times that she felt the opening went well and she was impressed with the thoughtful questions from viewers during the question-and-answer portion.

“One viewer correctly observed the unsettling tension present in the mural in the image of a boy wrestling with a tree, and another viewer commented on the affinity to mid-century children's book illustration. Bancroft seems to have a vibrant community of engaged and supportive artists, and I really enjoyed meeting people and hearing about their own work as well as their responses to mine. Some of the imagery depicted in the linocut prints were based on drawings made at sites in and around Bancroft,” she says. “It was especially nice when people could recognize locations, such as the cave near Jamieson Lake.”