A portfolio of images by Daniel Buckles
Translating experiences of people, nature and the inner self into the language of art -- line, form, colour, texture. Stories related to the images, and other experiences, are also collected into a memoir on "Connecting Worlds," from the Yukon to Mexico, Bangladesh and beyond. Available as an e-Book, in libraries and with book retailers.
01
Old Growth
This collection of images, made on Lake Temagami between 2020 and 2024, comes from deep inside an undisciplined experience with Japanese arts and spiritual traditions.
The aesthetic is rooted in the mid 1970s when I attended art school in Montreal. There, I began to soak in the paradoxical thinking and meditative qualities of Akira Kurosawa films such as Rashoman and Dodes’ka-den, shown regularly in film repertory houses alongside Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel.
During my first winter living in the Yukon in the late 1970s, I discovered through mail-order the beauty of Japanese brushes stuffed with goat and wolf hair in the centre and pony or sable outer hairs. I still use the bamboo mat I purchased then to protect the brushes, and the same stone mortar to slowly grind Sumi ink for painting.
Throughout the 1980s, I practised Aikido regularly when studying for my Masters and PhD degrees, becoming reasonably adept with the jo, a short wooden staff used to study Aikido’s principles with a weapon. I also studied Shiatsu, a Japanese form of massage using acupressure on the body meridians first mapped out more than a thousand years ago.
Attention to craft, including book binding, weaving, and knot tying, rooted me in an appreciation of simplicity and function, a core aesthetic and lifestyle in traditional Japanese culture. Clean, simple, direct. Many of the paintings in this collection were framed in the style of Japanese scrolls, using decorative papers and starch paste I made from wheat flour.
While Japanese arts drew me to the culture, somehow the Zen stream of Buddhism, with its attention to the sound of one hand clapping, did not sweep me into its current. I learned to meditate during my cancer experience in the late 1980s but did not study systematically or join a Sangham. I imagine now that if I do turn towards a community of practitioners it will be through the teachings of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh. Gentle and compassionate practice, and the politics of engagement, seems more compelling to me now than the more austere and solitary style of Japanese Zen masters.
If the Japanese arts are rooted, as they say, in an earnest exploration of the conflicts in human relations, I wish now to be less earnest and more joyful. These paintings translate the joyful experience of Temagami’s old growth forests, shorelines and creatures into the language of art: simple expressions of line, form and colour. Click on the image above to enlarge and scroll through the collection.
02
The Spell of the Yukon
"The summer of 1973, when I was seventeen, I hitch-hiked from Ottawa to Long Beach on Vancouver Island and back, by way of Dawson City, Yukon. The journey of 13,703 kilometres took me 32 days, cost me 50 dollars and filled me with stories.
The experience discovering my country started a relationship with the people and the landscape of the Yukon that subsequently carried me through three winters and six summers. Trips to what Yukoners call “the Outside” were simply time away from my Dawson home. I acquired so many stories I could entertain interested Outside friends for hours.
Eventually, the stories no longer seemed so close to me and fell away like the pairs of brown corduroy pants I wore exclusively for almost a decade. Now, some can be recalled while I explore and share the arc of my professional life from artist to activist anthropologist, and ways of becoming, being and belonging in the world." Extract from Connecting Worlds: a memoir on art, anthropology and activism.
Click the image above to enlarge and scroll through the collection.
03
Mexican Magic
1977 - 1984
"On the plane to Mexico City from Canada I happened to sit beside Lilia, a young woman who had been part of Mexico’s Olympic gymnastics team during the 1976 Montreal Olympics the previous year. She was returning home to Mexico City after visiting friends she had made.
I had been a gymnast in high school, giving me an opening to conversation with an attractive Olympian of my age. Short in stature and with compact muscles, both our body types were well suited to the sport.
Lilia had been guided into gymnastics by her parents, school teachers in Mexico’s public school system and avid proponents of a well-rounded life and education. Gymnastics has everything in a sport: grace, strength, fearlessness. As the only daughter and youngest in the family, she had followed a path of physicality while her two brothers became musicians and instrument makers.
Before we touched down in Mexico City, Lilia invited me to her parents’ home for New Year’s Eve dinner and a Mexican ritual: eating 12 grapes and making wishes while counting down to midnight. The experience, and an ongoing friendship with the family, introduced me to Mexican hospitality. It also launched a period of intense exploration of taste, colour, sound, texture and other delights of the senses. It seemed like I had emerged from the quiet Yukon world of black, white and subtle greys into a peopled kaleidoscope." Extract from Connecting Worlds: a memoir on art, anthropology and activism.
I spent 10 years living in Mexico, in the late 70s, then mid 80s and again from 1990 to 1995. Both my sons were born there. This collection, from all three of these periods, explores the magic of the people, places and experiences that made me feel "medio Mexicano", half Mexican.
Click the image above to enlarge and scroll through the collection.
04
Seed
For thirty years I had the opportunity to engage with remarkable people addressing fundamental challenges in unique places and diverse cultural settings: Honduran peasants inventing new technologies for hillside agriculture; landless Bangladeshi women gleaning nutrient-rich food from their surroundings; a former "criminal tribe" in Maharashtra, India facing eviction from their homes; First Nations women in northern Canada struggling to finish high school after dropping out to care for a baby. This collection focuses on people in their environment, a theme I also intend to explore in future art through a less literal style.
Click the image above to enlarge and scroll through the collection.