The Way Home
Noni Boyle considers the meaning of home during a time of crisis.
Noni Boyle, “Prairie Night,” 2021, acrylic on canvas, 20” x 20” (courtesy the artist)
Noni Boyle’s paintings in The Way Home, on view at the Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton until April 9, almost breathe. It’s as if they are windows into the outer reaches of the universe. Only the scattered houses suspended in these airy landscapes indicate this is our planet. There are no horizon lines, no architectural details, nothing to indicate a specific location. They are metaphorical landscapes of the mind.
Noni Boyle, “Navigation,” 2021, acrylic on canvas, 38” x 18” (courtesy the artist)
Boyle started work on this series soon after returning to her home province of Alberta from Ontario in 2019. It was a time of momentous changes. “I dealt with quite a bit all at once,” she says. “It was a radical shift.” Not only had she taken early retirement from her teaching post at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, she was also dealing with a major illness in her family. Then, a few months after arriving in Edmonton, the pandemic hit.
Seeing distant horizon lines punctuated by isolated buildings was comforting to Boyle.
“Where you grow up, the geography of that landscape stays with you forever,” she says. “You always breathe differently when you come home.” At the same time, she was lonely. The buzz of university hallways was replaced by the silence of pandemic isolation. It spurred Boyle to contemplate what it means to find home.
Noni Boyle, “Resistance,” 2020, charcoal on paper, 35” x 21.5” (courtesy the artist)
She began with a series of charcoal drawings titled Resistance. Her vast Alberta skies are filled with tumultuous clouds – as if monumental forces have taken control. Only miniscule buildings provide shelter from the unbridled forces of nature. Almost miraculously, amid pouring rain and raging winds, these houses endure.
Boyle’s houses are strange sanctuaries. With no windows or doors, and placed within vast spaces, they are less like inanimate objects and more like German Romantic landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich’s lone figures overlooking misty horizons. The title of one of Boyle’s works, Social Distance, underscores this anthropomorphic reading.
Abundant ambiguities make it hard to find a definitive sense of home in this show. But the work is more about the search than any pat answer. Boyle’s homes are ineffable: fortress and abode, comforting and foreboding. They stand flimsy and powerless against the night sky yet are all the shelter we have.
Their haunting colours, dark yet radiant, suggest a similar paradox. Boyle begins her paintings with brilliant underlays, such as yellow, orange or chartreuse. By laying transparent washes, right through to the indigo skies, the depths beneath continue to glow. “I really love that ambiguity,” she says. “It’s acknowledging a darkness. But they are very hopeful too.”
Noni Boyle, “Social Distance,” 2021, acrylic on canvas, 20” x 20” (courtesy the artist)
In these difficult times of war, isolation and environmental threats, Boyle can’t help but reflect on the relevance of art. “Why would I expect anyone to come to an art show when the world is burning?” she asks. “Then you think about it and realize that’s what you must do because hope is essential. You have to keep planting gardens. We have to keep looking to the future and doing what feeds our souls.” ■
Noni Boyle, The Way Home, at the Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton from March 26 to April 9, 2022.
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Bugera Matheson Gallery (New Location)
1B-10110 124 Street, Edmonton, Alberta T5N 1P6
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