Student Essay

Sonya Ocampo-Gooding
This essay was written by an M.A. student in a Museum Practice seminar in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University. The seminar was taught by Dr. Loren Lerner with the assistance of Dina Vescio, a M.A. graduate of the program.

The Art of Susan Feindel – My Body, The Sea

Man is defined not by what he creates, but by what he chooses not to destroy.¹
Edward O. Wilson, American Biologist

Art can connect people and places and nature and life. I grew up in the colonial city of Cartagena, Colombia where the Caribbean Sea and its marine habitat is an essential part of people’s lives. In September 2009 I visited the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa to study an important treasure in its collection: a specimen of Paragorgia arborea (Bubble-Gum Coral). Paragorgia arborea is a beautiful coral found in the cold Canadian Atlantic waters. The study led me to connect with Susan Feindel’s paintings of corals and with it a more profound understanding of how this beautiful natural object could speak to me personally.

Feindel has been inspired by the deep-sea coral and its broader role in how it supports the marine world around it. Her research into the life of deep-sea corals resulted in a series of paintings: Northern Deep Sea Coral (Womb) (2002), Northern Deep Sea Coral (Garden) (2002) and Northern Deep Sea Coral (Hip) (2002). The paintings, penetrating and vivid, bring me back to the sea. Feindel and I share the same environment growing up near the sea. We understand it. We respect it, and we have a deep concern for its ecological future.

Feindel was born nearby Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in 1947. She received her BFA from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and lived in Ottawa for over twenty years where she explored her landscape art until she moved back to the sea and her native surroundings in Chester Basin, Nova Scotia in 1997 to pursue ecological concerns aroused by her explorations in the Arctic.² Her investigation into the security of the northern deep-sea coral gardens combines both scientific and artistic approaches.³

Feindel states:

I am interested in Canada’s Eastern Continental Shelf, the plains and slopes of what are widely known as The Fishing Banks … my work tracks these distant and fragile habitats, its juxtaposes medical imagery with ocean life, bringing each closer to human consciousness and making visceral, the thought “my body, the sea.⁴

Feindel’s contacts with local fishermen, the Museum of Natural History in Halifax, and Dalhousie University helped her to understand more about corals. ⁵ Voyaging on the Bedford Institute of Oceanography vessel, C.C.G.S. Hudson, allowed Feindel to “access scientific data and video imagery as it arrives from the deep.”⁶ Feindel explains that,

…these works describe what I experienced when I first learned about the cold water corals. When introduced to them in a room containing many large coral ’skeletons’, a room wafting with the odours of delicate marine matter, I was stuck by the notion that in form and colour they looked much like human organs; lungs, womb, nervous systems. Several works evolved which contained images of corals positioned within human bone structures, i.e. ribs, pelvis. And so the name Coral: Womb.⁷

The Northern Deep Sea Coral (Womb) (2002) painting is a vivid and enigmatic representation of a woman’s womb, where life plays its role for humanity (fig. 1). Feindel has chosen the fragile consistency of paper to depict with India ink and Prismacolour pencil the dark and enigmatic space that is the womb. The vibrant red and pink deep-sea coral serves as both the protected and protector of life. The curvaceous lines outlining the coral’s form mirrors the shape of the womb. The painting is an expression of the lament of the sea and Feindel’s effort to protect the coral and its marine habitat. Feindel emphasizes that she seeks “to bring deep-sea coral animals closer to human consciousness by making ‘hybrid’ images that portray these similarities with a little imagination.”⁸

Northern Deep Sea Coral (Garden) (2002) shows how deep-sea corals are part of our humanness (fig. 2). In this painting, also done on paper with India ink and Prismacolour pencil, a coral is located within a human bone structure. In a white space where a black rounded blot is suspended in air, we see the reddish branches of a deep-sea coral growing out from the blot of black earth. The coral, surrounded by greens veins in an evanescent grey space reminds us of our relationship with life and death, air and life – our lungs – and the energy force between the arboreal coral and the earth. We are one. Feindel expresses very clearly how she creates these fragile marine environments, when she says that, “when I paint, I think of the actual ocean bottom that I have seen by video (while she was on the Hudson vessel).”⁹

In a third painting, Northern Deep Sea Coral (Hip) (2002) Feindel shows a human hip made of a black blotch of India ink on paper that argues passionately for the interrelationship of human and animal matter (fig. 3). Branches of deep-sea coral sprout from a human femur bone. Both coral and bone are made of one essential element: calcium. As Feindel explains:

Corals are very ancient animals, but they share some distinct characteristics with humans. For instance, the calcium of some corals is very close to human bone calcium and so is used in the treatment of bones in modern medicine. Visually, I wondered if their feeding polyps behave somewhat like our lungs and intestines, only are ‘inside-out’. Many coral colonies also have a form of communication that I liken to a human nervous system.¹⁰

Feindel’s works opened my awareness of our humanity and the urgent need to protect our environment. As she notes,

…the wonders of these immense and mysterious habitats connect us to a vast food supply and our human dependency upon it. The subjects of controversy, scientific, moral and political, have had an impact on my personal representation and understanding of this developing body of work. I became aware of our northern deep sea coral environment in 1999, an animal habitat corresponding not only in hydrocarbon sedimentation of the Triassic-Jurassic areas (and by extension, the oil/gas industry), but also with the gigantic off-shore fishing zones which are the global target of ocean canneries and fishing draggers.¹¹

Thus, as Feindel connects us to the ocean, its marine creatures and the currents within the ocean and our pasts, we experience and respect each of our connections with the deep-sea corals.

Figures

fig. 1 Susan Feindel, Northern Deep Sea Coral (Womb), 2002, india ink, prismacolour pencil on paper, 31 x 48.4 cm. (Photo: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art {http://ccca.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=52320&link_id=16})
fig. 2 Susan Feindel, Northern Deep Sea Coral (Garden), 2002, india ink, prismacolour on paper, 31 x 48.4 cm. (Photo: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art {http://ccca.ca/artists/ work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=52320&link_id=16})
fig. 3 Susan Feindel, Northern Deep Sea Coral (Hip), 2002, india ink, prismacolour on paper, 31 x 48.4 cm. (Photo: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art {http://ccca.ca/artists/ work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=52320&link_id=16})

Notes

1. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 19 Nov. 2009 {http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/sd/sdvol100num1e.pdf}. The support of Susan Feindel in preparing this text – her insight into the deep sea coral images and detailed discussion on this topic – is gratefully acknowledged.
2. Pat Durr, “Susan Feindel: Past, Present, Future,” ArtsAtlantic (Spring 2000): 43
3. Durr, 43.
4. Off the Map Gallery, 4 Dec. 2009 {http://www.offthemapgallery.com}.
5. Durr, 41.
6. Off the Map Gallery.
7. Susan Feindel, email correspondence with Sonya Ocampo-Gooding, Oct. – Nov. 2009.
8. Feindel.
9. Elissa Barnard, “Works Masterpieces in Message: Both Feindel and Butler Tackle Environmental Issues in an Almost Playful Manner,” Studio 21, 22 Dec. 2009 {http://www.studio21.ca/news.php?news_id=24}.
10. Feindel.
11. Virtual Museum of Canada, 19 Nov. 2009 {http://www.museevirtuel.ca/Exhibitions/Science/English/feindel-texte.html}.