I’ve always loved this painting. Coincidentally, Alex Colville is a Canadian modern painter with whom I share a birthday today, and the older I get, the more I appreciate this picture's wisdom and every nuance.
When I was younger, I was drawn to the pleasing symmetry of the painting's formal composition-- the strong line, cool colour palette, and contoured shapes-- and how it existed in a strange and uneasy tension with the picture’s unfolding content.
We are first presented with a woman looking through binoculars, suggesting a commanding female gaze and strong subjectivity, but then made to shift focus entirely and reconcile the ominous male figure hovering behind her. In an instance, the woman is rendered an object, both by him and ironically by us, the viewer.
Over time, I have come to see this painting less however as a statement of the woman's victimhood or the man's privileged vision. When I look at this painting today, I see a strong and determined woman who is completely aware but, importantly, equally indifferent, to the dominant vision that attempts to define who and what she is.
With middle age comes the confidence to dismiss and ignore how others wish to define you and/or who and what you should be. This shifting and unapologetic perspective-- mirrored in this extraordinary work of art-- teaches you to look straight through the judgement, ignoring society’s expectations, channeling the unflinching spirit of the powerful woman holding the binoculars.
Alex Colville, To Prince Edward Island (1965) in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.
