“We Are The Songs Of Weather”
Alan Stein
Exhibition - Christina Parker Gallery, St. John’s October 2025
The work in this exhibit is in part based on an artist book project collaboration with Newfoundland poet Des Walsh, the book was hand printed in 2022
Over the past ten years I have driven down most of the small roads leading out to the coast around Trinity Bight, visiting harbours, walking the hills and shoreline around Trinity Bay near our house in Old Bonaventure. Always with a sketchbook and camera in hand. I wanted to capture the spirit of the place through its natural and built landscape.
I collected stories and tried to understand the history of the place, over the years I have created and exhibited a series of paintings based on these sketches.
After buying our house in 2014 and establishing a studio in Old Bonaventure I met Des Walsh and we became good friends, I read his books of poetry and proposed that I create a body of work that would be inspired by his poems, and his family stories. I then designed and published a hand printed, limited edition book of 18 selected poems, and created a wood engraving image for each poem.
As part of my process of creating the images for the wood engraving blocks I made a larger charcoal drawings exploring and blending my original sketches with imagery inspired by the poems.
This exhibit features the series of wood engravings and the charcoal drawings together with pastel paintings from the area.
A short film “The Poet and The Painter” by Barbara Doran, documents this project.
