What it's like to paint the apocalypse in the middle of apocalyptic times

Saint John, N.B., visual artist Deanna Musgrave began work on her sprawling apocalyptic painting Transcendence (In Process) in 2019 — before the pandemic. She said she had a feeling even then that 2020 was going to be a transformative year.

"I had said to a friend everything is going to change in 2020, but I didn't have details as to how," she said. "I simply wanted to make a work to reframe the apocalypse — something that the history of painting often depicts as a horrific and polarizing event."

The idea for the painting came after John Leroux, the manager of collections and exhibitions at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, approached Musgrave about creating a new work that would be presented across from Salvador Dalí's painting Santiego El Grande.

"The Dalí itself is very apocalyptic with that horse and that nuclear bomb going off," she said. "But I wanted the apocalypse I was creating to be different — different from traditional ending-of-the-world scenes where some people are being elevated and some people are being damned to hell."

Made up of more than 50 hexagons that piece together like a puzzle, Transcendence (In Process) will cover a six by nine metre wall in the gallery and is set to be unveiled in 2022. Musgrave describes the painting as having a lot of blue and cloud-like forms in it, alongside abstract human forms floating into the sky. At the heart of the painting, mirroring Santiego El Grande, Musgrave has included a lone horse and rider. Only her horse is a horse of healing — not a warlike horse like the one depicted in Dalí's work — and her rider is a woman with open arms. She said the woman and the horse in her painting are working together, rather than one controlling the other. The apocalyptic event depicted in her painting is an event of healing, not of ultimate judgment or war.

"I really wanted this painting to be about the original meaning of the apocalypse as an unveiling of truth that was once unknown and, even if it is uncomfortable or destructive, that we have an opportunity to transform through it, and that in this apocalypse, everyone has an opportunity to elevate." 

As part of her unique watermarking process — which involves spraying, pouring and dripping water along with paint onto her canvases —  Musgrave uses donated objects to make marks on the surface. She said she includes the objects as part of a healing process for those who gave them to her.

"[For Transcendence (In Process)], I asked for objects at the beginning of 2020 — so the new year — and I said, 'Well, give me something that you wish to let go of, or honour and amplify, so that you can move into 2020 unencumbered by the weight of it,'" she said.

Musgrave said she sees herself as both an artist and a healer, and there are many positive ways art can impact lives. It can lead us to reflect, to have more empathy, to search for truth and meaning. It can heal, transform and give hope. 

In this video, we meet Musgrave as she works on Transcendence (In Process). We see the space where her painting will be exhibited and Dalí's Santiego El Grande up close. Back in her studio, we get a look at her unique watermarking process. 

"When you look at an artwork and you see something beautiful, I always believe that people are really seeing themselves," she said. "So it can remind you of what's beautiful or powerful about you in a time when you can feel powerless. Maybe that's art's purpose in the pandemic, in 2020, in this apocalypse."