Jessica Lin is a Canadian artist with a love of travel and adventure. As a professional photographer for 22 years, she always felt that images taken while traveling fell short of capturing the wonder of being somewhere new. She has spent the past decade developing her unique abstract landscape photography style, where she extracts elements from her various photographs, recomposing them to create reality-based fantasies.
During the many months of varying degrees of pandemic lockdown in Toronto, Jessica found herself deeply considering the concept of “home.” She spent dozens of hours walking in local green spaces with her husband, Norman. They had many conversations about the natural world around them, and how they could create a life that was more connected to it. This has resulted in a new body of work entitled “There’s No Place Like Home,” where Jessica blends the realities of interior domestic spaces and exterior wilderness spaces; these whimsical images are printed using fine art archival inks and processes, which are then mounted onto birch-cradled panels that have been stained to suit the image.
The experience has also led to a major life shift — a move to a large forested country property in Killaloe, Ontario after a lifetime of city living. Jessica is looking forward to seeing how this change will inform her future work. From a creative standpoint, she is now exploring subjects and locations much closer to home. The garden and forest have become her adventures, and the changing seasons have become her inspiration.
Jessica and Norman are envisioning the property as a multi-year, multimedia, 42-acre collaborative, immersive art installation. The ambitious long-term plan is to create art as a landscape, and as a magical physical space to occupy and embody, and to invite others to come spend time in it, whether as part of an artist residency or an art-infused nature retreat. Their current project, along with building the gardens, is converting a vintage camper trailer into a sleep-over immersive art installation.
