Watershed

Artist Bio: 

Jan Mills lives and works in rural Eastern Ontario. His work is largely informed by his natural surroundings and demonstrates his keen sense and handling of found, manmade and natural materials.

Whether through multiple canvas paintings, mixed-media collages, or found-object assemblages, Jan’s work tends to bring seemingly unrelated elements together into new dialogs.

Blown tire fragments turn into crows, gnawed beaver sticks become enigmatic wall sculptures, and birch bark becomes the moon and the water in which it reflects.

In Jan’s work, fragments of images and discarded materials often have an unexpected story to tell.

Artist Statement:

“Watershed” brings together selected works from three current, ongoing series influenced by the wetland area in which the artist lives and works.

“Wetland Totems” is a series of vertical, multiple-canvas abstract works. Unlike traditional totems, where elements are stacked according to a hierarchal order, these elements (abstracted from the flow of water, reeds, sky formations, etc.) are structured as they relate to each other in a natural dialog.

“Lunar Reflections” consists primarily of round collages on handmade watercolour paper that reference and include materials from the local wetland such as birch bark, wasp nest, dogwood, and milkweed. This series expands beyond these collages to include wall-based sculptures.

“Beaver Sticks” is a collaboration between the artist and beavers from a local creek. Gnawed sticks that have washed up on the shore have been utilized to create this series of wall-based sculptures.

Other individual wetland related pieces round out the exhibition.