Cynthia O’Brien has a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, plus a year at the University of Colorado, USA. She is recognized by her peers through Awards from Ontario Arts Council, Craft Ontario and Canada Council for the Arts. She has participated in numerous artist residencies including; Medalta, Alberta; Vallauris, France; TANKS Arts Centre, Australia; Watershed and MASS MoCA in the United States. Her work can be found in the collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, Art Gallery of Burlington and Taiwan Yinngi Museum.

Barbara Brown trained as a visual artist at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and completed her graduate work at Manchester Metropolitan University, England. Brown has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally, recently in Terrior at Ottawa School of Art and Returning and LifeCycle Conversations a collaboration with sculptor Cynthia O’Brien shown in Ottawa and Minden, Ontario.

Body and Spirit, is a diptych of two photographic images that marked the first time we directly addressed death in our collaborative work. Using a collection of O’Brien’s sculptural flowers, leaves, and seeds, we built a shrouded body formin a forest clearing in early winter, when the natural world turns inward and starts to die. Working together we explored both the positive form of the body and the void. The empty space suggests the body’s return to the earth. Positioned on a small rise, the form evokes ancient burial mounds and recalls connections to how humans have honoured death in the distant past. The physical piece now gone, captured in a photograph, the only artifact left remaining.

O’Brien primarily works in clay; Brown creates composite photographic images. Our collaboration is based on our personal experience of working in Long Term Care. Through ongoing dialogue and experimentation, we explored how these two materials of clay and photography speak to each other. At first glance, their qualities seemed in opposition—photography as intangible, made of light and shadow; clay as physical, grounded and bone-like. Yet both speak to fragility and impermanence. Over time, we found resonance in these contrasts, particularly in how they relate to themes of transience and mortality.

This work invited us to question any certainty we thought we had about death and dying. We wanted to create images that are porous and uncertain—less solid, less knowable. We intentionally welcomed ambiguity, allowing for a contemplative space rather than a definitive one.

In offering Body and Spirit for public exhibition, we hope to open a gentle and respectful conversation about death. Images can initiate a response below the surface, inviting reflection without demanding answers, allowing one to rest in the question.

Our years working in Long Term Care deeply informed the making of this work. We have seen the harm caused when the reality of approaching death is denied to the individual, families and caregivers. It is vital to recognize where one stands in the arc of ones days, and to meet that moment with presence and acknowledgment. This work is our way of honouring that truth, through the quiet language of form and image.