Aaron Paquette Journal

Seasons Change
24" x 18"
Mixed Media
on Canvas
2006

At the time I began this piece, the summer was just beginning to make way for the golden hues of Fall. I had made a number of trips to Southern Alberta in the weeks before this work started and I saw a number of crows, ravens, redwing blackbirds, etc sitting on posts and trees on the roadside. Wherever I stopped, there was a corvid looking at me.

The background is taken from a spot along the Belly River. It is a lush valley in the midst of a sunbaked landscape and the trees there are usually the last to turn. The Belly River also flows though Reservation land and in my daydreaming I had a vision of a Black Bird representing the people. It made me think of those photographs and drawings of the slow creep of European paraphernalia into the dress and costume of the Native Americans at the time, and how odd and out of place those tokens seem. I wanted to accentuate that by dressing the figure like one of those pictures, retaining the nobility amidst the absurdity.

The changes were coming, and were as apparent as the changing colours in the land, but if the change was into a wintery, desolate time, then it is easy to recall that the snow gives way and spring comes again. As surely as the sun rises, the seasons change.