Memoryscape: Spiritual Landscapes

Prince George artist Crystalynn Tarr’s work with found pigments sourced from Prince George and surrounding areas in the North speaks to this same notion of memoryscape. As she hikes through mountains, forests and lowlands collecting samples of the land, she brings along her own small version of sedimented past and community landscapes. Each work that she then creates from these meticulously crafted pigments carries with it a unique connection to the place it originated. Her own kind of map, tracing pigments to substrate is created here, moving from memory image to work of art. Memoryscape seeks to explore Tarr’s investigation of place in the North through her use of the land literally in her paintings. Tying the land so directly to her work, Tarr creates another view of society where through pictorial description memory is embedded and as in the Central Arctic where the Inuit were able to return to a seasonal house or village year after year simply by following their memories, stories or songs, Tarr’s paintings recreate her memoryscape of her experience of the North.