Halifax based artist Elizabeth Munro creates embroidered and surface manipulated non-objective ‘portraits’ of her parents that include audio elements to convey impressions of her parents from childhood; providing a nuanced concept of a portrait filtered through the subjective experience of one person’s memory.

Regina artist Belinda Harrow reproduces photographs of her maternal grandmother at different ages into embroideries. Floating within the outlines of the human figure are colourful depictions of animals. The outlines of the humans are black thread on a cream felt background while the animals are vibrantly hued.

Moose Jaw based artist Jennifer McRorie reimagines her daughters’ drawings in ‘whitework’; a type of embroidery where the colour of embroidery threads are the same colour as the fabric on which they are embroidered. McRorie states that “I was compelled to make this series of work as I wanted to honour my daughter, who was born with a genetic disorder, to recognize her voice, abilities and creativity. I love her drawings, her wonderful expression of line and so by embroidering her drawings, I’m acknowledging that even though she is marked by her genetics or biology, she will make her own mark, hence the title of the series.”

Known to biologists, artists, photographers, tourism operators, ranchers and other locals as ‘grasslands’, and to the Lakota as ‘maka tatanka’ or nehiyawewin/Cree as ’buffalo-land’, or ‘paskwaw mostos askiy’, the southwest and its natural inhabitants are celebrated for their beauty and resiliency to survive under extremely harsh weather conditions.

Compromised by accelerated human intervention, the lives of these inhabitants, (many of them considered species at risk), are compromised to the point that even the soil has become a ‘species at risk’. As an artist and yoga practitioner, Diana’s visual fascination with life in southwest Saskatchewan leads her to explore forms of energy, archetypal cycles of life and death, and authentic lives and relationships as a means to understand her interdependence with the land.