Grace Paraluch
“Flood I”, “Flood III”, “Departure”
about
Grace Paraluch is an interdisciplinary, visual artist whose practice is currently comprised of mainly large-scale oil paintings. With a strong interest in the bad copy and synthesis, thematically she deals with human intervention in nature, and the notion of landscape as commodity. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Montreal has been her home for almost seven years, where she will have completed her BFA this year.
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Using images collected from public archives and images sourced from the Internet, this series of large scale paintings draws from both personal and collective memories of the momentous 1997 flood that ravaged Manitoba and North Dakota. This flood became the catalyst for this body of work. Reflecting on the notion of ideal and contained nature versus wild and unpredictable, the series considers the impact of human intervention on the natural environment through suburbanized, domesticated land. I am interested in earth’s re-appropriation of the landscape and the resulting impact on human life.
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The lines that define Manitoba’s lakes, beaches and rivers become an impending threat each spring as the landscape undergoes powerful changes due to the fluctuating weather. Ideas of property comes into question as residents of suburban and rural Manitoban areas are met with shifting spatial definitions as the floodwaters rise and fall each year. The annual floods threaten the notion of white suburban manifest destiny and property ownership. Desperate residents are forced to create new boundaries with sandbags based on the force of the rising river; swelling bodies of water create a landscape under tension between land and landowners. Mixing elements of archival imagery and storytelling, these visceral paintings evoke the fluidity of memory and the conflicted sense of nostalgia in these types of events.