Hallie Watson art for sale

Objects and Meaning. An exhibition - Artist's statement

"It is a part of the human character to want to say, “I am here!” We want to make a mark. We want to show our presence in some way. To me, most things (furniture and objects) have a meaning. They have stories behind them that are part of other people’s expression of “I am here”. I think that is interesting, and I have started a project I call the “Treasure Project”. In my mind it is a book with a photo of a drawing of an object on one page, and its story on the facing page. The project is called, “Treasure” because there is a feeling of exciting discovery, a wealth of stories, layers of ghost people, and objects and meaning. Not all of these drawings are part of the treasure project. The others are a part of my exaltation of the growing world. In the garden, meaning, is a bigger thing. How a leaf develops and unfurls is a magic that includes me. Making a drawing of the layers of the petals of a rose is a meditation on the marvellous in the natural world.”


My Grandmother’s Desk. Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”	Standard Lamp. Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”	Pineapple. Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”


Apples in a Blue Glass Bowl Oil pastel 19 ½” x 27 ½”	Cherries Oil pastel on paper 19 ½” x 27 ½”	Place Setting Oil pastel on paper 13 ¾” x 19 ½”	Plate, Spoon and Napkin Oil pastel on paper 13 ¾” x 19 ½”

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Place Setting

My Dad gave my Mom a grandmother clock when they got married. It is a pretty thing, hand painted with flowers down the front, dinging at the hour and at the half hour. For my whole life it set the pace for domestic routine, without stopping.

Before she went to bed, my mother would set the table for breakfast. We would all get up the next morning at the same time, have breakfast, and go off to work and school. At the end of the day, I’d come home and mummy would be setting the table for dinner. She always set it at four thirty. There was a prescribed way to do this - the spoons here, the hot mats there. The glasses and silverware were always this way.

The placemats changed from day to day. They were pulled from a large collection handed down from my grandmother, and probably her mother. They were lacy, plain, coloured, hand embroidered, tatted and crocheted,and from every country anybody in the family had ever been to. With them went the napkins carefully ironed and folded.

It was beautiful. The silver cleaned, the lacy patterned mats contrasting with the dark polished wood. The glasses shone.

I always thought that setting the table in the afternoon was way too early for a dinner which wasn’t produced until eight, but the routine was a structure that the household hung onto - reliable and comforting. The clock dinged every half hour, and life was as it should be.

Having dinner was an old world arrangement. My parents dressed for dinner. My father put on dinner music. I had long ago had my supper and was working on my homework. There was conversation.

After dinner my Mom did the dishes and set the table for breakfast. Every single day. Except when they went out for dinner and dancing which was on Thursday night.

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Plate, Spoon and Napkin

How wonderful that a cryptic mark on the bottom of our soup bowls could say so much. They were made on September 19, 1871. William Morris was creating his designs from nature. Darwin had published his Origin of Species only twelve years earlier. Whistler had just painted his mother.

In 1871, I would have worn a corset laced up tight. On top of that, a bustle-a wire framework that made a kind of shelf out the back. On top of that, the petticoat, and then layers of the dress itself. My feet would not show. Certainly not my legs.

Here I am now. The bowls are still the same. The soup has probably improved (it is Szechwan carrot soup) and I am luxuriously corsettless.

Standard Lamp

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Standard Lamp

After my grandmother built her rather grand house in Forest Hill, she had a decorator come in and help her with the interior. The house had a definite Spanish flavour, inspired by houses that my grandmother had seen in Panama. Inside, there was a curving staircase, a good deal of wrought iron, and stuccoed walls.

The decorator’s name was Minerva Elliot. Even now her name drifts through time to the present in a charmed way, as though her unusual name, Minerva, can somehow work magic. Perhaps it did, because the hallmark of Minerva’s work, to me, is that she painted everything gold. All the lamps from that time (wonderfully carved and turned from
wood) were painted gold.

Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”

Pineapple.

Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”

Cherries

Oil pastel on paper 19 ½” x 27 ½”

My Grandmother’s Desk

Oil pastel on paper 27 ½” x 19 ½”

Apples in a Blue Glass Bowl

Oil pastel 19 ½” x 27 ½”