Marsha Kennedy: Afterlight

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Marsha Kennedy, “Pathos in the Periwinkle,” 2018

oil, archival ink on paper, silver leaf on birch panel, 10.3” x 13.5” (photo by Gary Robins)

Hope, as poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “is the thing with feathers” – it perches in the soul and never stops singing, no matter the circumstances.

The bird as a symbol of sweetness and beauty is so entrenched in the human psyche that the sight of a dead bird can stop us in our tracks. Marsha Kennedy’s exhibition, Afterlight, on view at the Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina until Oct. 6, holds many such moments.

Kennedy has devoted her lengthy artistic career to exploring the relationship between humanity and nature, hoping to raise awareness and promote change. She started these paintings with her usual optimism. But as she worked, her perspective became sombre. “I’m grappling with the notion of hope,” she says. “I think many people are grappling with that.”

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Marsha Kennedy, “A Bountiful Year,” 2018

oils, ink and silver leaf on birch panel, 16” x 15.8" (photo by Gary Robins)

In many paintings, a dead or sleeping bird foregrounds a scene from a familiar rural past. Kennedy enlarges antique photos and reshoots them while incorporating an actual prairie bird specimen. She then applies the new photographic image onto the painting’s surface and works directly on it with oils. At times, she also photographs antique dolls and doll furniture to create a context for her birds. A Flicker in Time, for instance, shows a doll seated in the crook of a tree embracing a yellow-shafted flicker. The bird is rendered naturalistically at life size. The result is an uncanny play between familiarity and discomfort.

Kennedy, a retired visual arts instructor at the University of Regina, says this latest series presents a kind of “broken narrative” of the post-war era, when dreams of material prosperity were common. “To me, the bird is sent into the past as an omen to the future that those dreams held,” she says. “Everyone was innocent and naive and had no idea where those dreams would lead them.”

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Marsha Kennedy, “Broken Fields,” 2018

oil, archival paper, ink and silver leaf on birch panel, 12” x 15" (photo by Gary Robins)

It’s the intersection of the personal and the environmental that makes Kennedy’s exhibition compelling. As a sensitive child, she once purchased a gosling from neighbourhood boys who had realized they could extort money from her by holding vulnerable creatures for ransom. As an adult, she cared for rescue crows.

Kennedy recalls listening to bird songs at her grandparents’ cottage at Echo Lake, northeast of Regina, and finding connections to creativity, loss and longing. “Birds do carry you away from your thoughts,” she says. “And they do have their own world that they can draw you into.”  ■

Marsha Kennedy’s exhibition, Afterlight, is on view at the Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina from Sept. 6 to Oct. 6, 2018.