Story: Patty Maher

Where does a story begin? 

The Salvage Mission

The Japanese have a wonderful concept called Wabi-Sabi, which is essentially a world view centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection with an aesthetic of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It recognizes that nothing, including ourselves, is permanent, and champions an ephemeral contemplation of something that becomes more beautiful as it ages, fades, and decays.

In the early winter of 2022, I became aware of a car graveyard quite close to my house. At first sight I was entranced by the rusted, broken and decaying vintage cars that were slowly being reclaimed by nature. Each of the vehicles in the yard once had a life and a story all its own, but those stories had ended, and they were now left to rot and decay in a tangled mess of earth and metal.

I was caught by the idea of giving some of these vehicles a new life and a final story by ‘salvaging’ them through photography – by digitally extracting them and placing them into a new background in the context of a story, so that the true beauty of their rust and decay could be appreciated through the restorative powers of space and imagination.

Everything deserves a final story.

The Ghosts

In September of 2020, many months into lockdown, I began experimenting with bringing photography and abstract painting together by taking long exposure photos and then digitally blended them with photos of my paintings. The result of combining these two mediums was a series called “The Ghosts”.

From the first photo, it was clear that this series would be an exploration of things and beings that exist beyond the physical. I didn’t begin with a clear idea of the direction the series would take, but instead took a more intuitive approach to see where it would lead. This is an approach I often take when painting, but rarely take in photography.

In many ways, the combining of genres for this series allowed me to explore and express beings and ideas that are more intangible or esoteric than photography alone, resulting in photos that are more ethereal than my usual photography style.

Selected Works

"Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places."

- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Sand & Stone

Inspired by the beauty of the rust and decay of the cars from “The Salvage Mission” I decided to further explore the concept of imperfection, corrosion and ephemerality within the context of abstract paintings.

Like our human story, each painting in this series carries its own history where layers were created in a balance between intuitive mark-making and careful deliberation. The story of each piece evolved over time and involved adding, subtracting, etching, embossing, writing, rewriting, overlaying and revision. The goal was to create pieces that appear to be forged from both natural and man-made elements with a sense of age and depth while embracing the beauty of transience, erosion, simplicity and imperfection.

Every painting tells a story.

The paintings in these series are comprised of mixed media on canvas including marble dust, sand, graphite, acrylic mediums and spray paint.

The best stories belong to everyone.

My photos are snapshots in the middle of a story.  My paintings tell stories through the sequencing of elements - time, color, space, and shape. I am a storyteller by nature. I have always loved unusual stories and many of those have inspired my art in one way or another. My art is stories told in a visual format

In photography, the characters I depict are anonymous and almost exclusively feminine. I design them to be everyone, and someone, but no one in specific. My hope is that, regardless of gender, the viewer will recognize themselves in the story, and if not themselves, then something familiar, nostalgic, or strange that tickles the edge of the imagination and causes a pause. 

The story begins once the viewer has accepted the invitation.

In addition to the anonymous and isolated everywoman, space, nature and imagination are the other key elements in my work. In a way, these are the pillars of my art, my touchpoints and the key places where I can always find inspiration. They are also the gifts I would offer the world if I could.

The situations depicted in my photos are both fictional and autobiographical. They are often surreal, sometimes whimsical, mostly odd, and almost exclusively awkward. Along with all that, I intend them to be beautiful. Their meaning is conveyed through feeling, metaphor and symbolism, but is never fixed and always fluid – open to interpretation. My hope is that those who view my work will write their own story and, in doing so, that the story will become theirs.

The best stories belong to everyone.