Xanthe Isbister
Website Address: http://www.xantheisbister.com/
Author's Description:
I seek to capture and express a “sense of place” in my work. I have spent a great deal of time immersed in the wilderness of Canada’s boreal forests, and those experiences have, and continue to impact my creativity. In recent years, my visits to any wilderness area have been minimal. This absence has created a drive within me to employ memory, perhaps idealized, as source material in my current ceramic sculptures. Most of us exist in an environment that is removed from the wilderness. Susan Clayton states, “The degradation of this human dependence on nature brings the increased likelihood of a deprived and diminished existence. Much of the human search for a coherent and fulfilling existence is intimately dependent upon our relationship to nature”[1]. My large ceramic sculptures and installations explore the psychological significance and impact the natural environment has on human identity.
[1] “Identity and the Natural Environment: The Psychological Significance of Nature”. Edited by Susan Clayton and Susan Opotow, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 2003.