Patrick Treacy, Visual Artist | Winnipeg, MB

For much of my childhood, I had the freedom to roam mostly unsupervised in northern bush settings. Places that were wild and potentially dangerous. With no one accompanying me, the land seeped into my bones unfiltered by adult explanations or interpretations. I immersed myself in a world of forest and lake and rock, where everything seemed in the constant motion of actively trying to survive. A riot of life. Of course, my family and other people lived in this environment, responding to and shaping it in various ways. But my childhood attention was often and intensely focused on the land and its non-human inhabitants.