When choosing from the various themes that the Glenbow Museum identified in its exhibition Sybil Andrews:
Art and Life for a composition project which opened the show on October 19, 2019, the most prevalent images
from the show depicted manual labour, action, machinery, dynamism and to me implied mechanistic sounds.
The artist was known for the bold character of her linocuts.
However, with further research, I became attracted to a different theme. I thought of Andrews’ life in England
during World War I, where she laboured as a welder in an airplane factory. During World War II she again took
up the welding torch and went to work building warships.
After the Second World War, she and her husband, Walter Morgan, decided to flee post- war England with its
poor economy, rigid lifestyle, and harsh grittiness, to establish a new life in Campbell River, Canada where they
found inspiring natural beauty and a home by the ocean.
The idea of responding to the gentler beauty of her more pastoral images appealed to me. The darkness and the
swirling activity of Storm as well as the gnarled roots of Douglas Firs set the tone for the mysterious opening of
my trio. Through these images I imagined the harshness of her life during those difficult war years.
However, just as her life moved from darkness into a realm of light and natural beauty, so too does my piece.
I chose the more subtle colours and contours of Fall of the Leaf and the graceful motion in Swans (1935) as my
inspiration for the end of my trio. It concludes with the gentle, serene flight of the swans and the beautiful sounds
of bird calls echoing through the mist of Canada’s beautiful West Coast.
Out Of The Night, Birdsong was commissioned by The Glenbow Museum for Land’s End Ensemble.
Alexina Louie