The Beginning of the Bear Project
The Bear Project started as documentation of a traditional form of entertainment in Northern Ontario, watching bears eat garbage at dumpsites. My idea originated from a visit to my hometown of Manitouwadge. I watched bears at the Manitouwadge dumpsite 25 years ago and found that dump bear watching is still as much a form of entertainment now as it was then. Dump bear watching is not unique to Manitouwadge.
Bear watching is a part of the fabric of Northern Ontario stretching from Sudbury to Temagami to Timmins to Thunder Bay and beyond.
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Bears At The Old Dump
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Size: 18" x 24" Date: 2007 Price: $600 unframed Winner of Honourable Mention at 2008 La Cloche Juried show
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While working on my documentation, the focus shifted as the 'nuisance' bear situation in Northern Ontario intensified. Bears have come to be viewed as pests as they forage for food and opportunistically find and consume human garbage be it in dumpsites or in garbage cans on private property. I began exploring the question "Are black bears encroaching on our territory or are we encroaching on theirs?"
I use my subject matter, design elements, colour and painting techniques to tell my story and pose my question. I originally painted the bears to be part of the landscape, sometimes indistinguishable from the shadows, rocks and land formations as seen in Bears at the New Dump. I was telling the story of the bears and the Manitouwadge dumpsite, then and now. The old dumpsite (pictured Bears at the Old Dump) is flat and part of the landscape, the new dumpsite is a crater carved out of the land.
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Bears At The New DumpMedium: Acrylic on Canvas Size: 24 " x 30 " Date: 2007 Price: $500 unframed
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Bears at the Old Dump was painted using photographs that were taken 25 years ago as reference. Bears at the New Dump was painted using photo references that were taken on a visit to Manitouwadge on the 50th anniversary of the town in 2004. I have since heard that the new dumpsite has been closed to the public due to the increasing numbers of bears using the dumpsite as a food source and the potential danger to human visitors.
This project was supported by:
