}
Pat Martin Bates: Destinations, Navigations, Illuminations
By Robert Amos
Pat Martin Bates: Destinations, Navigations, Illuminations
at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
(1040 Moss Street, 384-4101) until July 10, 2005
Morriss Printers used to close up shop an hour early on Fridays, to
allow for socializing. The printers, binders and linotype operators
stayed for beer and darts in the back. In the library upstairs Dick
Morriss circulated the scotch bottle among a floating crew of artists,
poets and writers.
One such evening in the mid 70’s, after two hours of uproarious
conversation, I found myself sitting on the bottom step beside Pat
Martin Bates. It was perhaps our first meeting, but we both agreed -
we’d known each other for a long time.
Reading many of the reviews and articles which have been published
about her, I realize that PMB makes many of us feel that way. Her magic
is inclusive, generous and freely offered. She is at the centre of “a
sprawling, global network of dynamic individuals,” Yvonne Owens has
written. “The world is hers: her garden, her mediums, her playground,
her friend.” No net of words will ever capture her.
Last year I conducted a public interview with PMB at Painters Lodge in
Campbell River. We talked (in a tent, during a rainshower) for an hour
and a half before an audience which was alternately enlightened and
mystified. To prepare, PMB and I spent two long afternoons at her Oak
Bay home. There, she treated me to a rambling discourse on a dazzling
range of information and experience. William Blake, Japanese papers,
Yugoslavian refugees, the 13th century mystic poet Rumi, cabaret songs,
army bases, the spatial harmonies of Arab geometry - this woman will
not be corralled.
To simplify PMB is to miss the chaotic richness of her life. She
rambled on about travel and teaching, friendships and literature.
Though she escapes summary I’ll set off on a tangent across her world.
Let’s explore her relationship with colour - and its absence.
Pat Martin was born in St. John, New Brunswick on June 5, 1927. She
studied at Mt. Allison University with Stanley Royle and went on to
graduate from the Academie des Beaux Arts in Belgium in 1957. Her
professor there, noting her passion for strong colours, set her to work
beside another student whose work was muted and sombre. They had an
effect on one another.
Her first professional show was at the Robertson Gallery in Ottawa in
1962. Two days before the opening, a fire in the gallery destroyed all
the paintings. She set to work immediately to replace them with new
work - predominantly painted in reds!
In that year her husband Al (a paymaster in the Canadian Forces, whom
she married in 1948) was posted to the wintry fastness of Wainwright,
Alberta. PMB’s palette turned white.
Eileen Learoyd, writing in this newspaper, explained this whiteness
another way: “After her father’s untimely death at age eight, PMB was
brought up by her great aunts, who lived in an old parsonage where
small windows dimmed the interior lights. Young Pat sat and looked out
on areas of winter snow, filtered by heavy lace curtains, stained glass
and ivory fans.”
In 1963 the Bates family (they have two children) came to Victoria to
live on the Forces Base Properties. Here she introduced black as a
major element in her work. She has explained this as a result of
falling down a coal chute when she was a child, after which she was
bedridden for six months.
“Black, for PMB, does not represent darkness,” Alma de Chantal wrote in
Vie des Arts Magazine. “Still less Death. On the contrary, it
symbolizes rather a passage-way opening on light, wisdom, knowledge.”
PMB is a printmaker. But her approach to printmaking does not involve
the reproduction of drawings. It’s more like making footprints in the
snow. There are no “editions” of a single image. Each print is for her
an opportunity to create a unique impression, an embossed low relief
sculpture in paper, created with a printing press.
As interesting as these surfaces can be, they are for this artist the
visible membrane between ourselves and the ineffable. With her
grandmother’s big hatpin, she pokes thousands of holes in them. In this
way she perforates the silence and lets the inner light shine forth.
“Pierce the mystery,” she has said, “and discover what is on the other
side of blackness.”
She places her perforated prints before a window or in a lightbox, and
that homely illumination becomes a sufficient substitute for cosmic
brilliance. Or, to put it more effusively, she creates “a dazzling,
winking landscape of black and white and silver. Her prints,” to quote
Eileen Learoyd again, “were shot with lacy pinpoints of light, pulsing
with stars, moons and planets. Fireflies seem to have settled on
perforated prints suspended from the ceiling.”
These pinpoints of light dance in patterns approved by mystics
(hexagram, circle, mandala, triangle) and by Mother Nature herself
(solar flare, spiral, star). Grommets and tiny gold wires make visible
the gravity which draws the planets together, while PMB’s independent
playfulness represents the chaotic randomness which keeps the stars
apart.
As enthralling as these “estampille” print assemblages are, they are
actually a means to something beyond. “I don’t look forward to being
rewarded,” she has explained. “Art and the doing of it are their own
rewards. Art for me is a bridge to another level - a silent
communication - a nutrient.”
James Purdie, writing in the Globe and Mail, explained her artwork as
“a neverending exploration of the invisible shoreline where spirit laps
over matter to create infinite ranks of lower forms - stars, hearts,
souls and other essentials of a benign universe evolving and unfolding
its wonders.”
The current exhibition, her third at the Art Gallery of Greater
Victoria, is not presented to enhance the artist’s reputation or to
forward her career. It is offered to us as an opportunity: for our
contemplation, exhilaration, and stimulation. Open your eyes, your
mind and your heart. Spend some time and prepare for illumination.
SIDEBAR NUMBER ONE
(PMB has often inscribed her creations with long titles, homemade
chants and poetics. Some of the titles of her artworks give the flavour
of her intentions.)
Perforations in silence
The seven secret sounds
Chinese night train to Yangtse Kian
Garden threads beneath the sands of time and tide
Sung Chinese night and the porcelain lady’s star
Golden-ringed rock with starweb
The gold pavilion gives grace to the goddess of water that runs uphill
Signal 19: perforated northern silence of an Arctic night
Inscape sea sailor moons
Lover hover hover lover
SIDEBAR NUMBER TWO
(Upon her retirement in 1994, PMB stopped keeping up to date her vast
curriculum vitae, and has devoted herself to creative pursuits ever
since. I have selected some of her more colorful accomplishments to
record here.)
1963 - Chilean Biennial Grand Award of Honour (Canadian group)
1963 - founding professor of University of Victoria Fine Arts Faculty
1969 - exhibited in Miro Drawing Invitational, Barcelona
1973 - Honourary Citizen, City of Victoria
1975 - elected to Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts
1975 - two-personal exhibition with Tony Urquhart shown at Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, Canada House London and Canada Gallery, New York
1978 - National Prison Arts advisory board
1981 - became a member of the Limners art group
1984 - solo show travelled to Toronto and Victoria
1985 - International Decade of Women Conference, Nairobi
1986 - gold medal, Internatial Biennial of Prints, Fredrikstad, Norway
1989 - guest of honour, Biennial of Graphic Art, Ljubliana, Yugoslavia
1990 - teaching at Banasthali University, Rajasthan, India
1990 - solo show at Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
1991 - excellence in teaching award, University of Victoria
1993 - Global Graphics Award, Biennial of prints in Holland
1994 - Honourary Doctorate, University of Victoria
___________________________________________
Copyright © 2005Robert Amos
Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B.C.. He can be contacted by
e-mail and you can view his paintings at
www.robertamos.com