ROAD KILL STILL LIFE
I have been photographing dead animals since 2002, mostly birds and deer. I take these pictures on my many road trips between Regina and Winnipeg, and in a circle that I complete at least three times a year, from Regina to Saskatoon to Edmonton to Calgary and back to Regina. I also record the fallen animals that I encounter on my daily walks to and from work

Initially, I was not sure why I did this. I just found the subjects and the hunt interesting. I just liked recording these abject beings. During an artist residency in Fort McMurray, AB (Nov. 2003), I made drawings based on the photographs. And the meanings became clearer. On one level, I was interested in producing something beautiful from something tragic and disturbing. I was also interested in meditations on death, especially the memento mori still life art tradition. I thought that road kill drawings and paintings might be a way to add something novel to that genre. Most still life paintings are about domestic spaces and bounty, food ready to eat or fresh flowers, or simply about beautiful formal arrangements. Road Kill plays with and goes against this tradition. I find these animals lying in the margins between culture and nature. They were once wild and beautiful. Then they were destroyed and abject. Now, as art, they are revived as something new, something aesthetic that encourages us to contemplate the effect of our colonization of nature, and our own mortality. I want to make drawings and paintings are between still lives and landscapes, and between representations and abstraction—a search for the spiritual through the material.

Upon contemplating these drawings and trying to relate it to my more literal Metis work, Cowboys and Indians (and Metis?), I began to understand another level of resonance and meaning. These routes—especially from Winnipeg to Regina and Saskatoon and Edmonton—trace the same trails my Metis ancestors took (in their fleeing Red River) and retook (as traders). Similarly, my compulsion to collect these pictures is similar to a trap line! My remaking them into drawings is an effort to breathe life both into the animals and my relationship to my heritage and this land.

David Garneau
May 2004