Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Susan MacPhail

12 Beluga Stump

This sculpture connects Lawren Harris’s Old Stump with the form of a breaching beluga whale, turning a painterly icon of the Canadian north into a three-dimensional exploration of wildlife, memory, and environmental change.

“"This work began with a visual connection between Old Stump by Lawren Harris and the form of a beluga whale. The pale, upright stump, weathered and simplified, echoes the rounded mass of a breaching beluga to me.In response, I created a sculpture of a beluga whale breaching, its form shaped to mirror the verticality and reduced detail of Old Stump. Translating Harris’s painterly language into three dimensions, the whale becomes both animal and remnant, alive yet still.This convergence links two Canadian imaginaries: northern landscape and Arctic marine life. By inserting a living body into Harris’s emptied, spiritualized terrain, I question what is absent and what persists. The beluga, tied to fragile ecosystems, introduces movement and vulnerability, inviting viewers to reconsider boundaries between land and water, past and present, and image and object.”