Past Exhibition
Rural Expressions
Rosemary Hasner
November 2013
The motif of domestic architecture continues with Rural Expressions, which features the mixed media work of photographer and artist Rosemary Hasner. Her constant engagement with photography forms the backbone of her practice. Most people don’t notice at first that photography is the starting point for her artwork. But the strength and nuance of her visual sensibility, her composition, and that je ne sais quoi quality that notes texture, beauty, and detail so effortlessly definitely point to the rigorous “looking” of a photographer. Her eye notices the subtle textures of barn paint and the variety of greens in shifting grass under a rising rural moon.
Juxtaposing captured moments and recurring symbols like barns, sheep, barking dogs, abandoned houses, cows, birds, and quietude with special effects like peeling or chipped paint from her digital library, Hasner builds a storybook narrative. Her audience encounters memory lane through tokens of evocative nostalgia, such as her careful and witty titles. The effect is sometimes cinematic, a whimsical and slightly surreal film still. The viewer becomes engaged, stirred by unanswered questions about, perhaps, the inside of an abandoned house and who was there, or perhaps by wondering what the cow or falcon was witness to. It is a question the artist leaves open, inspiring our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
Twenty-five years of work as a professional photographer in Toronto and rural Ontario, Hasner studied at Conestoga College in Kitchener. Her photographs have been published widely including in Photo Life Magazine, Applied Arts Magazine and Camera Canada. Canada’s master photographer Freeman Patterson said of her work, “Rosemary Hasner’s photographs are now part of my personal visual pantry.” Hasner now lives in Mansfield, just northeast of Shelburne.
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