Exploring Connections ~ Monika Kinner

This year, our group has chosen the show theme, ‘Exploring Connections’. The first thing that came to mind for me in my life regarding art, is the connection I share with my mother, Annemarie. She was a pastel artist.

I always assumed my love for the land and sky, coupled with my artistic aptitude, was innate; some talent that I was perhaps lucky to have tapped into. As I get older, I understand that these are gifts from my mother. I come from a long line of artists on her side, but also by the very nature of my mother pointing out the incoming storms, the fading light on the Prairie each night, and the blooming of tiny little weeds under foot, I realize she has played a key role in the development of my ability to see and appreciate art and the landscape. The more I explore this connection, the more I see that she was my first and most significant teacher.

I have worked full time as a Textile Artist since 2009. Because my pastel work had an uncanny resemblance to my mother’s work, I only used pastels in sketchbooks until I felt I had developed my own artistic voice with it, sometime around 2015.

Since my mother passed 2 years ago, I am now the keeper of her work, and I see myself in her shoes. Here I am, today, an artist just like her, raising creative children. And her gift to me – the building she made her art in. It’s like the passing of the torch, to keep creating works of undying love for the land, and to be able to do that in the same space where my mother created her art for most of her life. That’s a very deep connection that I’m honoured to have.