Arts Fest: The Shape of Quiet

If you were to ask Jessica Tamlin about her artist’s residency, which provided her the gift of eight solid days of solitude to focus on her art, she would tell you it didn’t exactly go as planned. She would tell you it was great, perhaps better than expected, just not quitehow she had expected it would go.

On a warm August day, Tamlin drove to Haliburton where she was met by Ed, a volunteer with the Haliburton County Community Cooperative. He boated her 10 minutes across the deep, clear water of Koshlong Lake to Halls Island. Ed showed her around and then left her there, alone. He would be back in 10 days to pick her up and take her back to her car, which she could see from the cabin that would be her artist’s garret – a place without distractions, where she could focus and be inspired. No routine. No people.

Tamlin is a landscape artist who draws inspiration from Ontario’s near north, where she often spends time in the summer, canoe tripping with her family. Although she never thought of herself as particularly outdoorsy, she grew up roaming the wilds of Mulmur and later became enamoured with backcountry camping. This is where she found her muse.

While attending art school at the University of Guelph, Tamlin thought she didn’t like painting because she could never think of anything she wanted to paint. Decades later, she is a full-time artist, painting landscapes, with her preferred medium being gauche.

When she saw a posting for the Halls Island Artist Residency, one day before the deadline, she knew it would be a good fit.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Tamlin. “There weren’t a lot of parameters to the residency program.” All she had to bring with her was her food, bedding and art supplies.

Tamlin likes to be prepared so when she departed for the island she had a plan – she would produce one 5×7 painting per day. Determined to be productive, she began.

“On the first day I did what I thought was a really bad painting,” she said, deciding to change tacks.

This is when the seclusion had an unexpected outcome. Over the course of her time on Halls Island, Tamlin became more and more introspective. She decided to create a video journal, initially so she’d be able to talk to her Instagram followers instead of herself. She hadn’t planned on journalling either.

She began observing, really looking, at her surroundings and wrote about how she saw the world, herself, art and nature. She began to slow down and enjoy the experience.

“When it’s that quiet, the outside world changes,” said Tamlin. You pay attention more. There is so much going on that is still.”

While the lake was very busy with people having fun – she could see and hear people playing and laughing – her little island was void of activity. Being alone while everyone around her was with someone, she began thinking about isolation and loneliness versus solitude.

By the end of her stay, Tamlin completed nine mini paintings, typical of the work she does en plain air while canoeing. Those, along with a large format landscape of the island, will make up The Shape of Quiet to be unveiled at the Creemore Festival of the Arts.

“I named it that because The Shape of Quiet is not always the absence of sound,” said Tamlin.

She realizes now she went into the experience having placed a lot of pressure on herself but was able to let it go. She said the experience has inspired her to explore solitude further, and has left her feeling more confident.

“I’m more on track to figuring out why I’m making art and what I’m doing,” she said, adding that she feels quite energized after what, to her surprise, ended up being a highly contemplative weeklong mediation, less about being productive and more about looking both inward and out.