Kristin Krimmel, The Barn Project
Exhibition at the Fort Gallery, 9048 Glover Road, Fort Langley, B.C.
April 4 – 29th, 2018.
Kristin Krimmel has created 12 graphite drawings and several acrylic paintings to celebrate the beauty of the cultivated landscape, the farmlands of the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows area.
Opening reception, April 8, 2018, 2 – 4 p.m.
Eleven years ago, when I moved to Maple Ridge, I immediately felt soothed by the landscape of rolling farmlands nestled up against the dikes of the Alouette River. Every time I went back to Vancouver, I took the road that is now Golden Ears Way down to 210 Street, turned right, then left just after the Jerry Sulina Park onto 132nd which becomes Old Dewdney Trunk Road.
I was especially attracted to the barns along this route and eventually took every opportunity to photograph them, even going into the side roads, not having the slightest idea what I would do with these images.
In the intervening time, I kept asking myself where the fascination came from. Was it that my grandfather had come from farmland in Friesland (Netherlands) and had farmed in northern Manitoba? Perhaps. Or that farm and rural land is being absorbed by the ever-growing pressures of the mega-city? And what was I going to portray?
Could it simply be the way light played on the barns, morning, noon and night, changing the geometry architecture, emblazoning the surface and deepening the shadows. When I decided my next series of work would be about barns, I had to explore them through drawing in a realistic way to get more intimately familiar with them. I started with larger graphite drawings, but then found I was too eager and in a hurry of excitement to draw more, so I adopted an 8 x 10 format.
I am an intuitive artist. Often I begin working without knowing the direction my work will take. I like to experiment with materials and forms. As I delve into the exploration, I find that the subject dictates a method to me and I am sensitive to the changes which suggest themselves as I work. I can’t help but thinking that the built structure is a visitor in the enduring landscape, even though the land has been wrought into a different format by man.
This series of barns comes mainly from the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows area. Some of them I photographed so long ago, I can’t remember where they were. Now, when I know the address, I write it down. It seems a pity to me that some barns are being modified into housing and some are being torn down. That natural disintegration of a structure which is no longer maintained can provide some interesting visual modifications to the original.
I discovered that there are similarities between local barns, but more surprising, the generations of family farmers have modified, added to, kept up or let go, making each barn a portrait of the needs of that particular farm’s activities and its intervention in the cultivated landscape.
I am only part way on this journey. The paintings and graphite drawings are only the first outpouring of my ideas on the cultivated landscape of this area in which I live.
Exhibition at the Fort Gallery, 9048 Glover Road, Fort Langley, B.C.
April 4 – 29th, 2018.
Kristin Krimmel has created 12 graphite drawings and several acrylic paintings to celebrate the beauty of the cultivated landscape, the farmlands of the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows area.
Opening reception, April 8, 2018, 2 – 4 p.m.
Eleven years ago, when I moved to Maple Ridge, I immediately felt soothed by the landscape of rolling farmlands nestled up against the dikes of the Alouette River. Every time I went back to Vancouver, I took the road that is now Golden Ears Way down to 210 Street, turned right, then left just after the Jerry Sulina Park onto 132nd which becomes Old Dewdney Trunk Road.
I was especially attracted to the barns along this route and eventually took every opportunity to photograph them, even going into the side roads, not having the slightest idea what I would do with these images.
In the intervening time, I kept asking myself where the fascination came from. Was it that my grandfather had come from farmland in Friesland (Netherlands) and had farmed in northern Manitoba? Perhaps. Or that farm and rural land is being absorbed by the ever-growing pressures of the mega-city? And what was I going to portray?
Could it simply be the way light played on the barns, morning, noon and night, changing the geometry architecture, emblazoning the surface and deepening the shadows. When I decided my next series of work would be about barns, I had to explore them through drawing in a realistic way to get more intimately familiar with them. I started with larger graphite drawings, but then found I was too eager and in a hurry of excitement to draw more, so I adopted an 8 x 10 format.
I am an intuitive artist. Often I begin working without knowing the direction my work will take. I like to experiment with materials and forms. As I delve into the exploration, I find that the subject dictates a method to me and I am sensitive to the changes which suggest themselves as I work. I can’t help but thinking that the built structure is a visitor in the enduring landscape, even though the land has been wrought into a different format by man.
This series of barns comes mainly from the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows area. Some of them I photographed so long ago, I can’t remember where they were. Now, when I know the address, I write it down. It seems a pity to me that some barns are being modified into housing and some are being torn down. That natural disintegration of a structure which is no longer maintained can provide some interesting visual modifications to the original.
I discovered that there are similarities between local barns, but more surprising, the generations of family farmers have modified, added to, kept up or let go, making each barn a portrait of the needs of that particular farm’s activities and its intervention in the cultivated landscape.
I am only part way on this journey. The paintings and graphite drawings are only the first outpouring of my ideas on the cultivated landscape of this area in which I live.
