The memory of the dead is not a morbid obsession for Sudbury artist Ron Langin, but rather an absolute truth from which no one escapes. So he has chosen to remember, starting from newspaper obituaries of well- or little-known members of his community. The artist knows that it is his own mortality that forges the strength of his bond to this life: he bears witness, gains awareness, creates a symphony of lives past.
The 81 tiny portraits that occupy one wall of the gallery represent Langin’s act of “communal grieving or communal remembrance of their lives.”
The obituaries are a fairly impersonal, sterile medium, he said, but an artist has the capacity to infuse energy into the flat, black and white images.
“After completing about 20 of these portraits, he said, I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of sadness. As I studied the faces, drew and painted them, I gained such a strong affinity for the person. I was quite moved by the project.”
Excerpt from the article Finding art in the obits, by Rob O’Flanagan, Sudbury Star, Saturday, January 17, 2004
