Coal Miner (SOLD)
Coal Miner (SOLD)
CA$200.00
24”X48” Charcoal on Arches Paper
SOLD
Pain has the ability to shape the lives of everyone it comes in contact with. When I started studying coal miners, men who were particularly subjected to suffering and pain, I found myself looking into familiar faces. Seeing this familiarity, long after the mines have been turned into museums, left me reflecting on the ripple effect of pain.
Coal Mining is an industry that has left its stain on countless generations of Nova Scotians. Families were destroyed by poverty, alcoholism, abuse and PTSD. These men’s pain quickly became a women’s issue, as men’s pain often does. All these years later the havoc lingers. Whole communities remain mired in poverty and hopelessness while the coal related trauma continues to adhere to the DNA of future generations. All from a black rock in the ground.
These portraits reflect on the industry of Coal Mining because of my own family's connection to it. My great grandfather went into the pit at age 11 and spent half a century working underground. This shifted the trajectory of my family and many families like it. The pain that the coal mining industry inflicted on the earth was immediately inflicted back upon the people that mined it.
The process of these portraits is to create fully developed faces while the drawing style of the bodies alternates between flat contour and realism - reflecting, on the one hand, an industry which is no more, and on the other a way of life that still casts a pall over communities and people. By using charcoal, a derivative of coal, I am making a direct connection between the artist medium and the black rock that ruled the lives of so many Nova Scotians.