Fabiola Martinez grew up in Querétaro, an inland province of Mexico, where the terrain is a blend of semi-desert and subtropical rainforest about as different from life on the Bay of Fundy as can be imagined. She came to Canada when she was twenty-five years old, looking for adventure on a year-long backpacking trip, with a thousand dollars, and no English. She fell in love; not only meeting her husband, a native of Saint John, but with the Canadian countryside, and the full spectrum of its seasonal colours, “This is a beautiful place, because you’re able to enjoy the four seasons. Here you can enjoy the colours you can see in the maple trees; the oranges, the reds, the yellows. In Mexico, it’s a different landscape, it’s beautiful, but it’s different. There is no snow. There is no fall. In the spring there are some flowers, and they grow nicely in the springtime, but it’s not remarkable like it is here.” Continue reading Fabiola Martinez, Canaport, & Cactus Bugs
Category Archives: Paint
Tom Smith, Kayleigh Kristiansen & The No Fun Zone
It is July, and the annual Picaroon’s Brewer’s Bash in Fredericton is a hipster’s paradise; a sea of humanity awash in sunshine, plaid, beards, and beer, punctuated with islands of live music and performance art. No fewer than sixty-three different craft brewers from across Canada had gathered around Officer’s Square this year, each dispensing a continuous deluge of fermented malt beverage in tiny half-serving mugs. I came prepared for a marathon, but others had come expecting a mad sprint, determined to sample everything the festival had to offer. By late afternoon there were already examples of previously upright citizens staring off into the middle distance, concentrating huge efforts of will into simply placing one foot in front of the other in something like a straight line towards their next drink. Mating rituals had begun in wild and ridiculous displays. The sea had the potential to get choppy.
I had noticed the painting earlier; the artist working away across a brightly coloured canvas under the shade of a tree. It made for a pleasant enough addition to the festival atmosphere in its unobtrusive way, people were milling about it, commenting on it and I occasionally marked its progress throughout the day. But that had been during the relative innocence of daylight hours, and now that the light of the sun was fading from the day the anarchistic mentality of a Thunderdome mob was setting in. Dead-eyed drunks were everywhere, Continue reading Tom Smith, Kayleigh Kristiansen & The No Fun Zone