Lost and Found
Have you ever lost something profoundly meaningful to you? Something that’s only meaningful to you? I did. In the midst of my divorce 10 years ago, a box of my most precious belongings went missing. I was told it had accidentally been thrown in the trash.
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Scars of Injustice
This was one of my very early paintings, ca. 2014. It’s called ‘Scars of injustice’ (20″x20″) and is in a private collection in Vancouver. I’ve been reminded of this painting recently because of discussions about the similarities and differences between Ukraine and Syria, both victims of Russian invasions. This painting was done while I listened to the stories coming out of the besieged Old City of Homs…
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After the Storm
Recently in my world history class, we explored WW2. I got to show my students this adorable photo of my dad (baby) on VE Day. If you’re new to following me and new to my blog, you may not know that the focus of my academic work is on lived experiences of armed conflict and post-conflict contexts. Here is a link to some of my work on this. My art has also been used for book covers about people in contexts of conflict. See below:…
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Smash the Patriarchy!
This term I’m teaching courses in political science, anthropology, and history. I wear many hats at my university. This is the joy of being an interdisciplinary scholar. In many cases, it makes me less employable for a full-time position because most departments want someone who did their PhD exclusively in that field. While my master’s and bachelor’s were in history, my PhD included history, political science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and gender studies. So, when I teach disparate courses, I play a game—I look for crossover between…
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On the Postcolony
This week I visited my family in Ottawa for the first time in two years. My parents are some of my best collectors, which means I get to visit many of my old paintings when I’m there. Here is one of the paintings hanging in their dining room. After I painted it in 2016, I wrote what I had inspired me to paint it. Here’s what I wrote: From October 2016: I spent the month of August back in northern Uganda. It’s an uncomfortable feeling…
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Surprising History of Golf… And What’s That Got To Do with My Art?
Somehow I have ended up being a golf mom. If you know me, golf is NOT something I would ever associate with on my own. But, when my middle son was 10 he had the opportunity to be sponsored to join a golf club… and he fell in love with it. Then my youngest son did, too. To me, golf had always represented an exclusive, privileged pastime. Historian Amber Njoh (2008) explains that the “need to distinguish the colonized from the colonizers commanded importance in…
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Asemic Writing
Asemic writing is a provocation to thought; and the thinking it encourages is not that of a system or science. It is open-ended, based in wonder and wondering. Schwenger 2019 In many of my paintings, you can find asemic writing (see some examples of my asemic writing artworks below). My kids call it “scribble writing,” which I think describes it rather well. But there is a lot more to asemic writing than just scribbles, and that story is rather beautiful, in a philosophical kind of…
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