An Improbable Place: Part Four

Over the last few weeks, The Review has presented installments of artist Richard Stanford's piece, An Improbable Place. The following is the fourth and final part of the series:

On Canada Day 1989, Margaret Hawking returned to her home on Main Street, Glen Sandfield, Ontario. She'd been given a souvenir Canadian flag to wave at the Canada Day celebrations at Dalkeith Centennial Picnic.

She wedged the flag into the side beam near the door, swept a few leaves off the porch and went inside for about five minutes.

All this was seen by Margaret's neighbor, Abby Pratt, who waved at Margaret as she left her house. Abby asked why she wasn't taking the station wagon. Margaret said she was meeting someone and it wasn't necessary.

"Besides, it's out of gas," she said.

Abby was so pleased - finally, maybe a new man in Margaret's life to quell the loneliness of 15 years of widowhood. Margaret has not been seen nor heard from since.  According to the police, Margaret Hawking, 44, has vanished. Ever since, Abby and some of her friends keep the grass cut and try to make sure things don't get too rundown in the hope that one day Margaret will return.

When I first saw Driftwood by David Beddoe, I thought the young woman of this compelling portrait could be Margaret. I am more than likely wrong; the country air creates fanciful delusions. Nonetheless, the woman of this painting is hiding from someone - covering her head in a hood while sitting, not within the lush bucolic hills in the distance but on a perfect rock, rounded by millions of years of erosion, surrounded by the bomb-effect of a forest clear cut.

Who says one only feels alienation in the city?

There is, however, another aspect Beddoe brings to this and the other paintings in this series: he paints on the burlap of used coffee sacks. The weave for this burlap is tighter than the kind you might purchase in a garden store. It creates a fine texture to the surface and a warm hue.

Floating over a grass-covered runway, the Great Blue Heron lifts for take-off, its slow, powerful wings beat like the rhythm of an abandoned prehistoric monster returning to its home centuries ago. Is this creature like a distant star whose light takes billions of years to reach us and, thus, what we are seeing is the event as it was billions of years ago?

Its silent lift-off has taken over from the drone of combat aircraft within the huge concrete triangle formed by what are the remains of an abandoned military airfield used to train combat pilots during World War II. The triangle shaped airfield is so huge it can be seen clearly on Google Earth. At earth level, however, the concrete is overgrown with wild grasses, trees and the flight of the Great Blue.

The conventional wisdom is this location, about 50 kilometres west of Montréal, was far enough away from the prying eyes of spies and that it best replicated the terrain of Germany where these men were soon to make bombing runs. I puzzle over this: I've been to Germany and it doesn't look anything like this place. I suspect it may have been because of the good company of the villagers of nearby St. Eugène who may have taken in these young men on a lonely Saturday night or for Thanksgiving dinner, their last before they went off to disappear in the war.

Is this an improbable place for a military airfield? For the Grand Hotel? For 205 artists?  For the Arbor Gallery?  It may be.

However, the chances are very good that there are thousands of such improbable places right across the country. The proximity of Montréal and Ottawa may account for the artistic impulse of the Prescott-Russell and Montegérie regions. These artists could be nothing more than refugees who could not stand the noise or these cities simply weren't big enough for us.

Whatever the reason, the truth remains that there is a critical mass of artistic enterprise within this triangle that is challenging, innovative, and stimulating and if the next time you find yourself at a deserted blacktop surrounded by cornfields and ghosts, look over your shoulder into the distance - probably that's where you'll find it.