Hilary F. Evans

Habitats of the Unseen

Northern Ontario-based artist, Hilary Evans, refers to herself as a “late emerging artist”. After many years away from artmaking, Hilary has been honing her skills in Algoma University’s Visual Arts Program and will be graduating with her four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts degree this spring (2021). Primarily a painter, she has also been experimenting with mixed media incorporating collage and original photography, as well as digital media. Hilary’s work is driven by a passion for the natural environment and the many species who inhabit the land. There is both a conscious and unconscious underlying influence in her work relating to nature which is evident even in her more abstract works. Hilary is currently focussed on exploring ways to adapt her practice to be more environmentally sustainable both in terms of materials as well as message.

During this past year of the pandemic, I have spent considerable time out walking in nature through all the seasons here in Northern Ontario. I found myself reflecting on the environments around me and the “habitats” they reflect. The title for this project, Habitats of the Unseen, stems from thoughts about all the wildlife that inhabits the land often not thought of or seen by humans, yet they are there. Now and then we catch a glimpse. Often wildlife is seen as trespassing on our urban habitat. Whose habitat is it really? Who was here first?

The idea of the “Unseen” came from thoughts about habitats destroyed by human activity such as clearcutting of the precious Boreal Forest, the scars made in the land by open pit mines, pipelines carved across the land, bulldozers clearing land to build more urban sprawl, even the ancient rocks that took billions of years to form, blown up in seconds to make way for a road. The “Unseen” are displaced and forced to move, or killed in the process of the human quest for development and profit.

In this series of abstract acrylic paintings, I offer windows into atmospheric spaces…a look into the “Habitats of the Unseen.”  With a few clues in the titles, I leave it to the viewer’s imagination as to what creatures might be envisioned or heard in these environments; what feelings or sensations are evoked. My hope with these works is that they will provide an opportunity for reflection. This is not just our world.