Anna-Maria Dickinson

Artist Anna-Maria Dickinson's three worlds are that of the Caribbean, Ontario Canada and Oracle, AZ. Her early life in the Caribbean islands has inspired a series of paintings expressive of their colour, lushness, slow pace and communality. These paintings comment on the closeness of small communities and neighbourhoods in which cooperation and generosity are needed to mitigate the realities of poverty. Dickinson's Ontario paintings, in contrast, fall within a Canadian landscape tradition in which people are absent or long-gone. Old barns, empty rural roads, quiet ponds and still winter scenes evoke pioneer environments in which one's closest neighbours or community were miles away. Juxtaposed next to the Caribbean paintings, her Ontario work speaks to isolation in the midst of natural beauty. The work she does in AZ falls in between the other two parts of her life. Adobe buildings, brilliant sunsets, desert brush and cactus and the spirituality she experiences being a part of the community and surroundings of Oracle, AZ