Zoe and I walked through the many wonderful pieces displayed in Joyce Wieland’s show Heart On, running at the AGO until Sunday January 4th.

The conversations I have been having with Zoe about criticism can feel different depending on where we are. Over dinner in the restaurant the tone is calmer than in the gallery in the thick of it. Location matters in more than real estate.

At the end of the year it’s normal to use sweeping generalizations. They are our broom to tidy the mess.

I apologize for my use of labels even as I search for the best ones to describe what I’ve seen. There was a painting among the first few I saw that I thought to call “primitivist”, meaning the style / movement that deliberately emulates something from a non-western culture and all that can suggest. The word is so big and heavy with allusions and implications I want to retreat back to grunts and gut-level responses without resorting to words, especially when the artist herself did not necessarily embrace them.

I read that she’s a feminist, a Canadian nationalist. I don’t know how to process that in 2025 terms, only that I recall when it was brand-new in the 1960s, when our flag had just been designed and introduced in 1965. There are layers to each of these, stages of development in each word as it’s understood to be a movement with some only partially in support, some pushing back, some articulating “feminism” or “nationalism” in ways that are no longer done the same way.

When I encountered the picture that moved me the most I had to photograph it.

I saw a few responses when I posted my photo on Facebook, including one from my friend Edward Brain. Edward said “Interesting painting, but not my style personally.” I was moved to reply, recalling that I first met Edward at the Toronto Wagner Society.

I said “It’s funny this strikes me as a very Wagnerian painting (as I aim for an epithet that might inspire you). This painting shows an artist self-reflexively. She’s painting even though her image is naive, simple/ simplistic , suggesting humility, alongside / within a landscape that’s like a volcano of creation. What exactly are we seeing? Fire pouring out of the sky to make a landscape: as the painter is “shaping matter”? I say that because (spoiler alert) the person standing painting also is the person who made this happen/ erupt. Yet she seems so calm. It took my breath away. I think Edward if you stood before the painting you might hear thunder or something comparable (perhaps from one of the Ring cycle operas).

If we recall that the painting is titled “Shaping Matter”: we are watching a painter in a painting. Of course the painting was painted by a painter, so it’s not a huge leap to say that the painter we see is in some respects an image of Joyce Wieland, the painter in the act of painting: shaping matter. The image is self-reflexive, even as I wonder: but what am I seeing?

Maybe that sounds crazy, but let me explain my Wagnerian allusion for this painting. I was mindful of the moment in Das Rheingold when Donner strikes the ground with his hammer, conjuring a lightning storm out of the sky. The rainbow that follows the storm will be the pathway the gods use to enter Valhalla. The relevant moments in this video come about 2 minutes in, and following.

Of course Wieland is a million miles away from the pompous Wagnerian opera. Even so, when we speak of “Shaping matter”, I can’t ignore that fire seems to pour out of her sky, and the ground takes shape in a variety of shades. Is the painting an image of her imagination, the stage upon which she gives the world shape? Yes I see it as partly a bit of theatre. Is the fire made by the painter but coming from heaven, from the gods? You tell me. The figure who holds a brush and palette in the painting is looking back at us.

What are we seeing? I am not sure but it’s electrifying.

As I told Edward in reply “I keep staring at the image. I will try to get back to the show for another look before it closes.“

And let me mention in passing that the image I downloaded from the Canadian Art Database is different from my photo, and both differ from what I experienced standing in front of the painting. I’m reminded of why live performance and live experiences of art matter. You don’t get it the same way in a book or on video.

There is a tendency in some of Wieland’s paintings that I want to call “naive” after a bit of googling for the best descriptor of a style that suggests childlike imagery and a childlike artistic sensibility.

Notice that the face of the artist shown in this sophisticated painting is in some respects an image of naivete even though she’s in the middle of this complex image. No wonder considering the way she was sometimes attacked (something I recall sadly).

As I look at her image in the painting, I’m wondering what she felt making this, what ironies might have been in play.

And I continue to quibble over epithets.