Breadcrumbs

Mahoney Archer

I am a sometimes poet and collage artist living locally in Ocean View. My creative practice is informed by the natural environment and by a lifelong engagement with visual art and literature. 

I attended art college and trained as an art teacher. I have spent many years exploring the ways images and words can communicate experience, memory, and meaning. Both poetry and collage allow me to gather fragments—of observation, thought, feeling, and place—and bring them together in new and unexpected relationships.

Appreciating and making connections has always been my favourite part of being alive and from that the work of Mary Oliver has been deeply resonant. It has had a particularly significant influence on my practice. Her attentive observation of the natural world and her capacity to find the beautiful and profound in ordinary moments celebrates the interconnectedness of all living things. I think her exploration of the questions, joys, and vulnerabilities that make us human is very special. Her work reminds me to look closely, to listen carefully and to remain open to wonder and connection.

While I have written and made artwork for a long time, much of this collection of poetry and collage has emerged during an ongoing period of poor health. This past year has required me to slow down and reconsider many aspects of my life. The experience created space for reflection and prompted a deeper engagement with questions of time, mortality, resilience and gratitude.

It felt important to create this body of work as a way of responding to that. The poems and collages speak to one another, each offering different paths to themes of memory, place, grief and acceptance. Together, they represent an attempt to make sense of things while celebrating the enduring presence of nature and the human capacity for reflection, imagination, and hope.

Through these collages and poems, I invite viewers and readers to pause, observe, and consider their own relationship with the world around them. I hope it gives you something.