This series of paintings was inspired by channel-marker poles that I
first saw a few years ago during a visit to White Head Island, which forms
part of the Bay of Fundy archipelago that includes Grand Manan.

During a trip across to White Head on an exceptionally grey day, the
markers suddenly loomed out of the fog, guiding us to a hidden harbour.

I was immediately drawn to these roughly hewn objects and their
directional markings and lashings. Although the poles serve a very practical
function as navigational aides, I disregarded their utility - I was attracted to
their inherent totemic and sculptural qualities (something which they share
with the Bay of Fundy weirs) , primitive and elemental.

For me as a Maritimer, the poles seemed to mark time as well as space,
pointing to a nearly lost way of life, one more firmly connected to the
natural world. They spoke of crises of identity (both personal and
collective) and ecology.

As I worked on a series of channel-marker paintings (first in Mahone Bay
and then in Ottawa), I also began to contemplate another marker of change
and the erosion of local culture: painted wooden buoys. Like the channel
markers, these were sculptural objects that served a utilitarian function,
but which could be invested with other meanings, serving as icons of
change.

As a Nova Scotian in exile, I navigated these waters for several months,
searching for signs and meaning, trying to divine the future of a life
that was at once my heritage and something increasingly foreign to me.

I was searching for a shoreline, a place that the Nova Scotian poet
Charles Bruce called "the cobalt blur of home." Eventually, I found my way to
islands, my own archipelago - a place in the near distance, just out of reach.

Poles, buoys, a panorama of islands in the harbour: all these things
flow from my engagement with exile and with my past, marking journeys home -
and away. But enough text. One reason I am a painter is that I do not
entirely trust words.

Su Rogers