Artist Statement · Alexandra Haeseker

ARTIST STATEMENT

My exhibition for Vernon follows my 2020 exhibition The Botanist’s Daughter installed for Edinburgh Printmakers Castle Mills Contemporary in Scotland. But the threads of origins for this subject matter unravel back to other women artists working Centuries ago with similar obsessions of artistic scientific investigation.

Maria Sibylla Merian left Frankfurt Germany in 1699 to research the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths found in Surinam, South America. Her graphic portfolios have become archives of the relationships between plants and insects as co-dependent interwoven equations. While Harriet and Helena Scott left Sydney in 1848 to the sanctuary naturalist’s paradise of Ash Island, Australia - where they engaged in working with their father’s Lepidoptera project to become natural history illustrators recording all known Australian butterflies and moths. These and other women artists created some of the most significant advances in descriptive painting from Nature in their time, that continues to enthrall and captivate viewers. Their works have inspired and informed my own in-depth artistic research.

My own early childhood, living in Sumatra, Indonesia, ignited a similar connection to the natural world, where at four years old, I was able to capture live tropical insects in the jungle and study them each day at close range, then by nightfall release them back into the jungle. Scorpions, large spiders, golden beetles, and many other odd species were fascinating creatures living parallel lives to human activity. I’d often fall asleep at night to the sound of crickets my father would capture in a matchbox for the night, also to be released at daybreak.

However, these female artist predecessors who had one foot in science and the other as adept illustrators of nature themes, were in a time of wonder and discovery. Exploration of entomology and flora had roots into Dutch still life painting, where there was an embedded narrative code of awareness of life and death in the same breath. Fine Arts becomes the language system whereby time, place and context aligns crossed paths into whatever the psyche of that particular intersection reflects in the larger demographic. For Merian, “her aim was not systematic classification, anatomical description, or priority in academic disputes, but to conduct us on a visual journey through the wonders of transformation.” 1.

I live and work in the Foothills Country of Southern Alberta near The Rocky Mountains, next to British Columbia, in Canada. This part of the country is a barometer to witness changes in the environment that can be traced by way of small differences leading to bigger consequences. The melting of mountain glaciers due to global warming, pine beetle infestations in the mountain forests, wild fires from increasing thunder storm weather conditions, resulting in flash flooding, mudslides and drought - are conditions that we see with increasing frequency in this part of the world now.

My exhibition for Vernon is a critical context, for this geographical location is an epicenter where forest fires and flooding are altering the interior landscape at rates never before experienced in this region.

My artistic research, gathering natural materials across seasons, and depicting them - becomes warnings shown to us through this subject matter, as danger signs we must pay attention to.

Insects and plant life are scaled larger-than-life to reverse the viewer’s perception of their own relationship to nature where the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Enhanced coloration, structural fragility, and sculptural juxtapositions invite scrutiny to see these common elements in new ways as a contemporary art installation.

ALEXANDRA HAESEKER RCA

FOOTNOTE: 1. Martin Kemp, The Nature Book of Art and Science, Oxford University Press, London UK, 2000