"Meanwhile, somewhere in Canada..."

Ten years ago, during a bout of insomnia, I read vintage comics to help me fall asleep. It didn't work—I read hundreds—but I noticed something I couldn't unsee: when a character needed an escape, they often ended up in Canada, beneath a caption that placed them amid a romanticized wilderness landscape clearly inspired by the Group of Seven.

"Meanwhile, somewhere in Canada..." is my ongoing series of oil paintings of Canadian landscapes sourced from American comicbooks, cases where illustrators borrowed from Canadian art history and produced something recognizable neither as documentary nor fiction. I preserve the size and location of the original landscape panel on the page, omit characters and dialogue, and redact the didactic boxes and the rest of the page, surrounding the landscape panel with an inky, oily void. Each completed work is framed, by hand, in American oak (because of course it is).

Each title is found in the relevant text of its comic book, the part where the story indicated that the action had moved to Canada, often resorting to American vernaculars, landmarks, and systems: "Red Deer, 28 miles"; "Buffalo Woods State Park"; "Northwest of New York State". This work occupies an ambivalence I've long found fascinating and unresolved: we yearn for recognition from southern neighbour, but often bristle when confronted by America's understanding of us. This has never felt more politically loaded than right now, as trade-wars and the threat of annexation reframe what it means for us to be bound up in America's cultural and economic orbit.

Click here to access a .pdf of the exhibition catalogue, by Dr. Anna F. Peppard