Mark Prier

Artwork

Pulp, 2024

Twenty years ago I was in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, standing on Crow Hill, looking out at the town’s pulp mill with my sister, Victoria. She mentioned artificial vanilla could be made from lignin, a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry. This offhand fact created a tenuous connection for me. You never forget the smell of vanilla, just like you never forget the smell of a pulp mill.

A life punctuated by pulp mills

I was born in a pulp mill town in New Brunswick. My earliest best friend came from a pulp mill town in Northern Ontario. I moved to a pulp mill town in Newfoundland when I finished art school. My first memory is the smell of a pulp mill.

Returning, sort of

Two of the previously mentioned pulp mills are closed. The third has experienced temporary closure. I’ve fallen out of contact with that early best friend, though I think of them often. I left Newfoundland, but it remains with me, fifteen years later.

I’m aware that these and all my other memories are dimming, fading, changing, becoming something else, something less distinct but somehow more specific.

This year I started painting people from my time in Newfoundland. Artificial vanilla extract on watercolour paper. The caramel in the extract stains the paper, re-creating memories (fictions?) anew. The moments captured are past, but these faded memories linger, images prompted by my recollection of that conversation on Crow Hill. The stories I now tell myself about those moments supersede the moments themselves. They’ve become part of my life’s fiction, riding the line between truths and lies.

Playing pretend

Recently I told my sister about her asteroid namesake, 12 Victoria. She likes to pretend the asteroid was named for her, though it most certainly wasn’t. John Russell Hind, who named it, died in 1895, long before either of us took our first breaths. Still, my sister and that asteroid share a tenuous connection. Like pulp mills and artificial vanilla. Enough to build a story upon. Something from a pulp novel.

I have no asteroid namesake, but I, too, can pretend. Just like my sister.

Acknowledgement: This series draws on the efforts of DAMIT and their models of 12 Victoria. Each painting adapts DAMIT’s work under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Materials: artificial vanilla extract on watercolour paper, letter, drawings on cardboard, construction paper, and kraft paper.

Photos: Natalie Hunter

Black vinyl wall text on a white gallery wall, reading: Mark Prier, Pulp, September 4 to 28, 2024. In the middle is an unusual circular symbol, like an official seal or a shield. A view into a white-walled gallery with a wood floor. On the left wall is a watercolour painting of a pulp mill. On the far wall ahead is a four by three grid of watercolour portraits. All the paintings are caramel-toned from being painted with artificial vanilla extract. A painting pinned to a gallery wall. It depicts a pulp mill but abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones. The watercolour paper casts a shadow below it on the wall. A watercolour portrait of a bearded man with a wry smile glancing sideways. The paper is pinned to a white gallery wall. The portrait is abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones. A watercolour portrait of a woman with shoulder length hair wearing a striped shirt. She reclines, one hand resting near her forehead. The paper is pinned to a white gallery wall. The portrait is abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones.
A watercolour portrait of a man with short hair wearing a striped shirt. He looks down, smiling. The paper is pinned to a white gallery wall. The portrait is abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones. A painting pinned to a gallery wall. It depicts the moon but abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones contained within a silhouette of asteroid 12 Victoria. The watercolour paper casts a shadow below it on the wall. A painting pinned to a gallery wall. It depicts what appears to be a landscape (but is actually a portrait turned sideways). It is abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones contained within a silhouette of asteroid 12 Victoria. The watercolour paper casts a shadow below it on the wall. An installation shot in a white-walled gallery with a wood floor. Pinned on the left wall closest to the viewer are: a two page letter from the artist's sister, and three drawings/paintings by the artist's child done on cardboard, construction paper, and kraft paper. Further back on a distant wall is a watercolour painting of what appears to be a landscape (but is actually a portrait turned sideways). It is abstracted in three impressionistic layers of caramel tones contained within a silhouette of asteroid 12 Victoria. The watercolour paper casts a shadow below it on the wall.