Notes from a Studio Visit with Marnie White
Marnie White discusses her artistic practice, creative inspirations, and the ways Toronto's shifting urban environment shapes her paintings during our most recent visit to the artist's home studio. We were pleased to bring works from this new series of paintings to the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Upon arriving at White's home, I am immediately reminded of her incredible collection of works by Canadian artists, amassed through hers and her partner's shared endeavour and hung in an enviable salon-style installation that rivals those of many institutions. "Thank you for having me. How has she been?" Always incredibly warm and inviting, before we even make it to the studio, she and her partner are already offering me tea and biscuits.
When I enter her studio, I gasp.
"Marnie, what is going on here?"
A new series of works surrounds me. Acrid colours have been remarkably paired through subject matter and execution, creating compositions that now feel wholly resolved. There is something whimsical and playful about them that makes them immediately appealing, yet also macabre. I am looking at multiple paintings in her signature memento mori style, featuring plastic favour bows. Some are paired minimally with a flower; others seem to spill from the canvas, only parting to reveal a garish skull grinning from within. The same skull reappears again, peeking out from an abundance not of bows, but of foliage and botanicals.
We stand looking before beginning to talk.
"Where did your preoccupation with plastic come from?"
"I had a conversation with a colleague whose background is in archaeology. She noted that the things that stay in the ground the longest are bones and plastic. There's something compelling about the natural material that is ever-present in our bodies and the manufactured materials in plastics, and how both persists the longest in the ground."
That collision, synthetic permanence beside human remains, now reverberates throughout the paintings. Plastic bows appear decorative and disposable, while skulls evoke mortality and ritual. Yet both become artifacts with a strange durability. Together, they suggest a future archaeology shaped as much by consumer culture as by human memory.
"And the skulls in the foliage, where are those?"
"I started carrying this skull around with me and photographing it hidden amongst the foliage installations throughout Toronto's financial district. Again, there's an irony to these immaculately maintained, manufactured green spaces designed for the wealth industry when one of our public gardens, Cloud Gardens, is right there in the same area but inaccessible and closed to the public due to a lack of funding."
Another collision, and White's provocation, exposes a tension embedded within the city's urban landscape. There is another small painting depicting a path near BMO Field, where White, an avid runner, noted the extensive limitations placed on her own and other Torontonians' access to well-trodden trails and pathways leading up to and during the FIFA World Cup.
What was once experienced as connective green space for residents became, at least temporarily, fragmented and controlled. In the paintings, the skull resting amidst these environments feels both abandoned and stubbornly present: a witness to the ways public spaces are continually reshaped by capital and spectacle.
Despite the underlying critique threaded throughout the work, the studio visit does not end in cynicism. Instead, we pivot to her current preoccupations.
"What are you sketching and interested in presently?"
"I've been sketching a lot of native plants. We should plant more of them because they support local wildlife. I've also been thinking a lot about St. Francis of Assisi and his attention to animals. There's a man who goes to the park every day and whistles, and all of the squirrels run to him, like a sort of St. Francis."
Radical attentiveness comes to mind when I think of St. Francis. I think the same applies to Marnie White. Amidst the concrete, financial systems, late-stage capitalism, and ornamental fixtures of wealth, she remains radically attentive to the forms of connection between humans, animals, and the environment. Through her paintings, we are invited to notice what lies buried within the rhythms of our lives.
