Although Rosanna Marmont started painting western landscapes at a young age due to her love for Canadian prairie, she is now working towards opening an exhibit focused on metalwork art using scraps from shooting ranges.
From childhood Marmonts’ imagination was always flowing and as a way to express that she turned to art. Finding beauty in western culture after moving to Canada, she began to draw and paint the prairie and agriculture.
After moving from New Zealand and travelling lots, Marmont always felt like an outsider. As a way to escape the world around her she turned to art.
“As a kid I think it was a coping mechanism that formed a place and kind of, losing myself in my imagination and my imaginary world and the thing with moving is that you’re an outsider wherever you go. Later in life I realized that as an artist you’re also an outsider.”
Marmont started working on her oldest friend, Jordie Regiers’ cattle ranch, fixing fences. She spent her free time painting using the bright blue skies and clear landscapes as motivation. Being by her side for quite some time, Regier has watched her work transform over the years.
“When she started doing more work on wood for a medium, like plywood and that and painting, you know, landscapes kind of around this area and especially the skies and stuff it was pretty neat to see how her work kind of evolved through that and the experience being, you know kind of out in this part of the country and using that as inspiration.”
I’m interested in objects that are considered to be refused or discarded in one context, and beautiful, interesting and conceptual in another.
Rosanna Marmont
As her work started to evolve, Marmont wanted to create a deeper understanding within her art. She wanted to push her artistic abilities and use stereotypes of the wilderness to challenge the viewer’s eye. Make them look at places they wouldn’t normally, the details of cattle or the contrast of colours.
“Push it further, question it, add an element that doesn’t sit quite right or guide the viewer’s eye to a place that they wouldn’t be used to looking at or introduce something that I find beautiful that traditionally would be thought of us ugly,” she said.
Marmont began her university studies at McGill University where she started to take art history because of her interest in learning more about the art world. After a year and a half she switched to Concordia University where she could study fine arts.
Since university, Marmont has opened many different exhibitions in Alberta and Arizona that showcase a variety of her artwork like her paintings and sculptures.
Although Marmont loves the thrill and sense of accomplishment that comes from exhibitions, she also feels as if they can hold you back as an artist. She thinks that too much pressure can prevent you from taking risks.
“So sometimes it’s good not to have an exhibition lined up, so that you try doing something that could fail and that’s when you really start to evolve or develop as an artist.”
Every day Marmont challenges her creativity to produce art that pushes her out of her comfort zone. As an idea for an exhibition, she wants to collect the scrap pieces of metal used as targets from shooting ranges and transform them into art.
“I’m interested in objects that are considered to be refused or discarded in one context, and beautiful, interesting, and conceptual in another. The artist has the ability to take objects out of context and present them to an audience in a space where they can be reconsidered,” says Marmont.
She is intrigued with how a lot of people would see regular objects, such as shooting range metal, as something that doesn’t mean much but as an artist she sees it as something beautiful.
“They tell a narrative about a certain segment of society that is practicing the skill of a destructive action, and yet in partaking in this they have unknowingly participated in the making of art and beauty,” she says.
Melissa Cole, who has worked with Marmont in the past, has opened a show together at C-Space called ‘I am Western’. Cole believes that using shooting metal will showcase the idea of reframing what people normally expect to see, and focusing more towards contemporary form of western art.
“I think the public will really enjoy it and you know, there’s that interest that it is from a shooting range, so that level as well would kind of intrigue people to see taking something like that, that I guess could potentially be violent and destructive to create something that I am assuming will be beautiful and meaningful.”
As her next idea for the future unfolds, Marmont will begin her manipulation of shooting range metal and create the vision she has in her head.