Maggie Quinn Art – Spring Garden of Artists on Chaleur Bay

by Margaret Sharon Olscamp Dunlop NB Canada Sunday June 9 2024

My first exhibit at the historic Doucet-Hennessy House in Bathurst NB was called ‘Don’t Forget you’re Irish’. It lasted for the entire month of July 2018 while I was the first resident artist at the house.

The following year was the beginning of ‘Covid time’ as I’ve come to call that period. By the time summer 2023 arrived I was eager to begin a new body of work and share it in a new exhibit. I say share because I don’t offer any of my paintings for sale. Sometimes I have cards made with images from some of them. I make these cards myself and have offered them for sale at various local craft markets. I’ve sold a few but never managed to make enough money to cover the twenty-five dollar table fee charged by these markets. People usually go there to socialize and buy food. Local artists are not high on their priority list it seems.

After the isolation imposed during ‘Covid time’ I too felt a need to socialize. After all, that’s what humans do. They socialize. I began my next group of paintings by August 1 2023 and named it ‘Don’t Forget You’re human.

During those first few days I explored how humans erect fences and build borders. The first pieces I worked on were meant to illustrate how individual culture does or doesn’t fit into the social institutions that define what an artist is. I’m not sure exactly when I realized that this first group was not expressing what I was trying to say. I had to get back to the garden. I put this group of work away, unfinished.

My next step was to bring out drawings I had done before ‘Covid time’ and ‘911’ and other traumatic events as far back as 1989. I was faced with over three decades of soul-straining questions about what it means to be human. I had an old piece of work for every one of those thirty-three years after 1989. These would be the pieces I would repurpose into new pieces of art.

This exhibit, ‘Don’t Forget You’re Human’ is me examining my own life as a human artist through that repurposed work.

(This piece was written by Margaret Sharon Olscamp around December 14, 2023. It is the first in the series ‘Don’t Forget’. A video of the opening of “Don’t Forget You’re Irish” made by my husband, Gilles Olscamp may be viewed on Youtube. The Video is also called ‘Don’t Forget You’re Irish.)