Martha Henrickson, Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto - View from a Train

Martha Henrickson: View from a Train
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
February 3 - 26, 2000

Jane Corkin Gallery presents MARTHA HENRICKSON’s new body of work, view from a train.

Fascinated by train travel from an early age, Martha Henrickson (b. USA, 1942, Canadian) made her first trip across Canada by train in 1968. Over the last thirty years, she has examined the landscape from the windows of many trains, which has given her a humility before it. These photographs are an experience of her meditative journey rather than a pure record of the landscape.

Her large-scale colour images are subtly abstract. Equally subtle are the reminders of Martha Henrickson’s transit: trees blurred by motion, an aisle light tracing rectangular shapes in the sky over the Rockies. Her black and white images are delicate, highlighting wave crests, mountaintops, ski tracks in the snow, rock formations, and rivers. In this body of work, the windows and tracks of the train frame the landscape as she sees it. The aluminum mounts, which are an integral part of each photograph, echo the machines that have made this view possible.

Martha Henrickson’s awe before her chosen subject is a quiet gratitude, tempered with the awareness of the landscape’s vulnerability.

With this exhibition, view from a train, Martha Henrickson gives us her eye on her home, a reminder that the landscape endures, we are but travellers on it, and technology gives us another part of the picture.

JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Suite 302, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com