#4
Chromogenic print
24x100" Edition of 6
12x50" Edition of 12
2008
#9
Chromogenic print
24x90" Edition of 6
12x45" Edition of 12
2008
#22
Chromogenic print
24x108" Edition of 6
12x54" Edition of 12
2008
#27
Chromogenic print
24x96" Edition of 6
12x48" Edition of 12
2008
#58
Chromogenic print
24x100" Edition of 6
12x50" Edition of 12
2008
#74
Chromogenic print
24x68" Edition of 6
12x34" Edition of 12
2008
Highway 506 Revisited
As you drive through Northern Ontario, the Canadian Shield is clearly visible. The building of the highways has revealed some of the planet’s oldest rock formations, bearing the marks of human labour and the impact of dynamite blasting. These rocks carry information ranging from the billions of years of their formation to the annual cycle of plant life clinging to them and even bear the spontaneous human impact of sprayed on graffiti.
Peter MacKendrick’s repeated journeys to these sites started in his childhood with visits to the family cottage “up north”. However, it takes an artist’s eye to form a body of work. Beginning in his late teens, the Canadian Shield rock formations along Highways 41 & 506 became an inspiration. Peter re-worked this imagery into his print-making, painting and photography and this was a dominant motif he explored while completing his B.F.A. in Visual Arts with honours in 1977 at York University.
After having been a photography instructor in the visual art program at the Banff Centre, Peter returned to Toronto and began to create panoramas, including a reworking of the formations along the Highway. He has done this by adjoining numerous prints into horizontal composites resembling the fleeting imagery you see as a viewer from your car, thus acknowledging a “new” genre, the moving landscape.
The revolutionary changes brought by the digitization of photography over the last ten years have made it possible to produce the works you see in this show. While the technique of digitally stitching together multiple images allows for the production of large-scale, complex, panoramic prints, viewers must still interpret for themselves the visual clues to the passage of time and to the ongoing changes that it brings. Regardless of technical process, manifest is a steady, painterly beauty that reveals itself by way of Peter’s attention to the texture, colour, scale and perspective seen on Highway 506 ... revisited.
Peter MacKendrick’s repeated journeys to these sites started in his childhood with visits to the family cottage “up north”. However, it takes an artist’s eye to form a body of work. Beginning in his late teens, the Canadian Shield rock formations along Highways 41 & 506 became an inspiration. Peter re-worked this imagery into his print-making, painting and photography and this was a dominant motif he explored while completing his B.F.A. in Visual Arts with honours in 1977 at York University.
After having been a photography instructor in the visual art program at the Banff Centre, Peter returned to Toronto and began to create panoramas, including a reworking of the formations along the Highway. He has done this by adjoining numerous prints into horizontal composites resembling the fleeting imagery you see as a viewer from your car, thus acknowledging a “new” genre, the moving landscape.
The revolutionary changes brought by the digitization of photography over the last ten years have made it possible to produce the works you see in this show. While the technique of digitally stitching together multiple images allows for the production of large-scale, complex, panoramic prints, viewers must still interpret for themselves the visual clues to the passage of time and to the ongoing changes that it brings. Regardless of technical process, manifest is a steady, painterly beauty that reveals itself by way of Peter’s attention to the texture, colour, scale and perspective seen on Highway 506 ... revisited.