Mary Green : Evocation

by Paul Walty

Is a picture worth a thousand words? A troubling question if only in its treacherous simplicity. The answer depends on the picture and the words involved, does it not? In the case of Mary Green’s latest work, the words do take centre stage, but not with Hollywood blockbuster aplomb, no CGI thunder-and-lightning.

On entering the gallery, the visitor finds the wall space populated with a series of photographs, each accompanied by headphones and a media player. The subject matter is the stuff of Mary’s dreamtime. The images are frequently in soft focus or blurred. There are tight compositions of the human figure and northern Ontario landscape that drift in a space both familiar and off-kilter. The fronds of frost on a winter window. A distant bench – empty – with a backdrop of a lake viewed through a loose screen of trees. A jumble of an unmade bed caught in a light-slice from a partially opened door. Like snap shots that catch but do not capture. A suggestion, a trace of half-remembering.

These photographs are the sign posts for the stations on an acoustical journey.

The headphones mark the passage of the artist. They offer the visitor Mary’s recent “poetic works”, coloured with an intense emotional power and a spare beauty. Hardly verbose, Mary is a master of more is less. Each work is a brief excursion, wrought with a clustering of words and phrases polished to slow perfection. Each resonates, like grouse drumming, half heard, half felt long after the sound file has ended. In the ensuing silence the photographs linger.

Does this exhibition point to a new orientation in her creativity? When I asked Mary if she saw writing as a key element in future work, she shrugged. Her tools are those that best serve her purpose. Whatever inspiration tomorrow heralds, it is then the search begins for what is the most appropriate in bringing the idea to life.

I do hope that Mary Green stays her course with her writings, but if not, I am happy that she came this way once – there is a world of wonder in her words.