Cyanotype Landscape Series
‘Considering Light’
“Light is generous” -John O’Donohue
Since living in Prince Edward Island/ Epekwitk, a small Island in the Canadian Maritimes, we’ve experienced powerful storms that have changed the sands, shoreline, and sandstone. Weather is a reality we can’t control, it seems we are often fragile and need shelter from the storm. It was the last storm of 2022, which uncovered remnants of shipwrecks long past, in this area along the North Shore; three years later and there are still signs of loss, and we sorely accept the old growth fell, and they won't return in our lifetime.
The lighthouse, towering like the tallest hemlocks, arrived in the mid-nineteenth century to warn ships off landmasses and signal in severe weather. When the demand for commercial shipping was high in both the transportation of goods and passenger ships; the lighthouse once a beacon on a high hill, was a way to communicate an impending danger. Many vessels perished, and the lighthouses each tell a story of how the ships went down, and of the survivors. Though it was only the last century, of those sea-faring days; the closeness and the farness seem intangible. The sea holds on to those stories and the mysteries beneath the waves, untamed and without form, the ocean allows great beauty, relaxation as well as great danger hand in hand. Tidal waters are harsh and unpredictable in the North Atlantic, and the ‘light is generous’ to ward those at sea.
The heart and hearth
Colours fade to silver,
a towering glow of the lighthouse appears
amidst the gloaming
driftwood fires, alight in flame by night
on salted skin, the soothing crackle, and tired eyes
Deep ocean dwellers, returning currents, and turning tides,
rouse night fishes, water to sand speaks to shore
your heart, and hearth akin
Rei,2025
In appreciation of the symbolism of the lighthouse; its reflective meaning and the many ways writers and artists have interpreted them;
This Cyanotype landscape series is a window into the creation of place, one in which to ponder… by capturing the presence of the moment, and within the setting of a modernizing Island. I wish to embrace these giant forms, for they stand as relics of the past, holding strong in the worst storms. Architecturally they were built to last, outdating most of the old-growth trees; in their isolation they meet with ocean and wilderness on rocky outcrops, creating a vast sense of space and place, we pause, we consider, and we create space.
Rei, 2025