joanne gallant-chilton

From the exhibition catalogue…

The transformative and healing potential of art is always at its most powerful when it originates from and speaks to the heart

Interpretations of art and exhibitions are based on what we have learned and experienced.  We can look at an image of a sunflower and think of gardens, fields, van Gogh, tasty salted seeds.  Streams of associations are made, followed, touched on, and then let go.  For the most part we are satisfied with this process.  We are comforted and reassured and the world is as it should be.  Yet change is constant and some of it happens quickly and some of it is tragic.

Tragedy happens to entire regions, cities, locales and families but it always rests with the individual.  As individuals we have a natural ability to overcome tragedy, to make sense of it, and continue living.  We do this collectively first as individuals and then as families, locales, cities, regions, and so on.

This then is the nature of Facing the Light – Sunflowers.  It is the return journey from the place of anguish that only love can know and experess.  It is also our collective journey.

That you have read this catalogue and Joanne Gallant-Chilton’s artist statement will mean that you have gone past the surface interpreatation of the show.  It will mean that you have in some way changed and for a while the sunflower will become more than just another flower.

Bruce Campbell RCA, Gallery Director      February 2010

Artist’s Statement

On February 16, 2007, I received a call that changed my life forever.  My granddaughter attempted suicide.  She had died and was brought back to life again by the paramedics who responded to the 911 call.    She suffered severe brain damage as a result of her suicide attempt; she could no longer speak, eat solid foods, walk or care for herself again. Twenty months later, on October 29, 2008, she passed away peacefully as a result of an infection that rapidly moved through her body.

The loss of a loved one is similar to entering into the surreal.  The cave of darkness that embraces us is where we stay until we are ready to come forward again to the light.  When we lose someone in death we also experience a kind of death inside.  We have all heard people say “time will heal” – an overused cliché as a valuable reminder that healing does take time.  Time does heal, but surely some other element must be added to produce a worthy gift that we can share with other humans on this journey too.  There is nothing we can take to make the pain go away, but there is something we can do that will help bring meaning to the pain we face and at the same time honoring the life of the loved one.

The healing process is often like a seed hidden within the soil waiting for the right time to see the light.  To make this transition from darkness to light everything must be right.  Time, water, sun and conditions make it possible to see things from a different perspective.  We cannot rush, fake or deny this painful process; it is something every one of us will have to experience at some time in our life.

One month before her death, I had the opportunity to visit and shared a connection with my granddaughter with sunflowers, planting a seed for my own path of healing.   “Facing the Light” uses sunflowers as a metaphor for connecting and the path of grieving.   Sunflowers reflect the unexplainable, their mysterious and remarkable ability to reproduce hundreds of seeds from a single pod to continue life: when the pods are full at the end of their life they droop slightly downward, heavy with the promise of hope and renewal.  Sunflowers reflect the memory of a life shared, death and the healing transformation to the beginning of new life. 

The images presented in “Facing the Light” are representative of my personal process and stages working through grief and understanding my connection between pain and renewal.  This is like the sunflower facing the light to grow and blossom, creating beauty in the process. In the end this beauty is stored in an abundance of seeds, like the wonderful memories of my granddaughter, each ready to sprout into a new life and direction.