This Hour is Mine, 40 x 60 “Well, I quit my job,” my friend Victoria tells me as we stepped single file across a crusty snow covered field. “I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t have any money. All I know is that this isn’t my path. I never led a conventional life. Until I had a child. A conventional life just doesn’t work for me.” It was a grey February day. The walking was more treacherous than we expected. Victoria and I are both edging close to empty nests. Slices of ourselves that where stored on a high shelf, almost two decades ago, seem to pulse quietly. Victoria adds; “You have not led a conventional life.” Behind Victoria I smile quietly. I think of my friend Jen in the Yuk
Wrench, 24 x 12 When my kids were tiny, we lived in a small village. After growing up in Toronto and feeling utterly untethered, Clayton seemed like a location I had been waiting for. The village is a cluster of 20 or so houses, half of them owned by artists, set on a lake, about 45 minutes from Ottawa. Clayton General Store is where you can pick up your mail, buy screws, milk, or camo. You can sit on the front porch of the store where they have a pew, grab a free book off the outdoor bookshelf and look over the lake. My husband and I checked out the house in winter. The owner greeted us at the door. She weighed about 80lbs and had a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth, Rene Levesq
