Following the official unveiling of "Lake Field" at Struan Farm last week we've come to learn more about the actual place and how Rosanna Marmont, the artist, came to paint this scene. Thought I would share this with you, in Rosanna's words:
Yes, Lake Field is a very real place. Lake Field is the largest field (16 square miles) on the 96 Ranch where I frequently go to work and paint. These fields have been named by the cowboys who manage them and tend to reference the most defining feature of the field. Lake Field used to have a lake in it that has since dried up, leaving behind a vast saline flatland which is surrounded by a series of hills, gullies, and stream beds. Last spring I repaired the fences on the boundaries of this field, some of which are about 100 years old from the original settlement of these areas. As the people who live here say, if you look at the barb wire in the wrong way it’ll snap. You can also see old routes carved into the hill tops from where the buffalo assumedly stood to get away from the mosquitoes, which are thick almost all summer long.
The process of walking this fence line took a full week of 12 hour days, during which in the evenings I began painting ‘Lake Field’. The painting looks westwards over the hills towards the flatland, which is not yet visible. I wanted to capture the feeling of working in this area. All you can see in every direction is land, and one fence line ahead and behind you. For me it provides an almost religious sense of isolation and a relief that nature is a force so much larger than ourselves.
Sadly this is not really the case in the province of Saskatchewan where the ranch is located. I think as little as 10% of native prairie grasslands still exist. The rest has been cultivated for soy, wheat, canola, etc, heavily sprayed, turned over year after year. Most people understand prairie to be a field of wheat. Native prairie grassland continues to be transformed into cropland, usually with exception only of areas too rugged to cultivate which remain as cattle ranches.
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