Small Prints

Cortes Island Pastoral” was painted by Lee Robinsong in 1982 as one face of the two-sided wooden sign that once graced the outside entrance to Hollyhock. The sign hung under a shelter where the Hollyhock Gatehouse building now stands.

Inspired by the two-sided British inn signs of the 18th and 19th Centuries, the sign features “Cortes Island Pastoral” on one side and “Cortes Island Rococo” on the other. “Pastoral” is a snapshot of the original Hollyhock Farm and its community members circa 1982. In the centre of the image a hollyhock grows high over the farm, a reference to the prophecy of a gypsy fortune teller who told two of Hollyhock’s founders to “Look out for red hollyhocks growing high over the garden fence. They will be an important sign.

Cortes Island Rococo” was painted by Lee Robinsong in 1982, as one face of the two-sided wooden sign that originally graced the outside entrance to Hollyhock. The sign hung under a shelter where the Hollyhock Gatehouse building now stands.

Inspired by the two-sided British inn signs of the 18th and 19th Centuries, the Hollyhock sign features “Cortes Island Rococo” on one side and “Cortes Island Pastoral” on the other. While “Pastoral” documents a day in the working life of the Hollyhock Farm, “Rococo” illuminates the divinity of the place. Combining the graphic design of Columban Celtic Christianity, the classic Renaissance
depiction of God Giving Life to Adam, and the natural beauty of South Cortes Island, the image is a reverent, iconoclastic altarpiece for the place that would become the Hollyhock Retreat Centre. Lee, in retrospect, regrets that God didn’t give Eve the hollyhock.

In the summer of 1982, Lee Robinsong lived with his young family in a beach cottage on the south
end of British Columbia’s Cortes Island. Three years removed from the busy world of cities and
commerce, they lived off the land and sea, increasingly connected to the tides and the cycles of the
natural world around them.

“Echoes” pays tribute to this passing moment. In the painting, Lee uses the physical form of the
torus to give the viewer a simultaneously inward and outward perspective on Cortes Island’s land,
sea and sky. Look carefully and you’ll see the exterior landscape mirrored on the interior.

"As above so below; as below so above; as within so without; as without so within."

On the middle line where these worlds meet are Shivon, pregnant with Kaeli, and three-year-old Erin,
soaking up a long, hot August afternoon.“Echoes” is an expression of wonder, and a celebration of love and the cycles of life.

In October of 1984, Lee Robinsong journeyed to Glastonbury, England, from the Hollyhock Farm
(now the Hollyhock Retreat Centre) on British Columbia’s Cortes Island.

His voyage was inspired by a fascination for the seven-circuit labyrinth and its appearance over time in many unconnected lands. The ancient cultures that occupied the places now known as Arizona, Scandinavia, Ireland, Britain, Crete, and Egypt all embraced this simple yet complex design as an important symbol of their cosmology.

Through research, Lee understood that Glastonbury Tor, the legendary hill rising out of the Somerset Levels, might be a three-dimensional labyrinth of the same design. The Tor has also been linked to the Eastern theme of the holy mountain, or seven-tiered mountain where the gods dwell. Glastonbury is also the mythical place linked to King Arthur, and to Joseph of Arimathea and the early arrival of Christianity in Britain that inspired William Blake's mystical hymn And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time. Lee spent several days walking the Tor, following the twists and turns of its eroded pathways. Upon his return to Hollyhock, he painted the Somerset landscape in late autumn, with the Tor at its centre. “Glastonbury Tor” was completed in January 1985, in Hollyhock’s Raven building, then Lee’s studio. “Glastonbury Tor” is dedicated to Peg Post, Hollyhock visionary, benefactor and the generous sponsor of the creation of this painting.

“Gorge Entrance” celebrates the exhilaration of taking a kayak out on a perfect spring day, after a long season of wild winter gales on British Columbia’s west coast. In the painting we join kayakers at the entrance to The Gorge, on Cortes Island’s west side. It is a powerful place: strong tidal flows carry boaters through the narrow entrance into The Gorge’s inner waters. On one side of the entrance, towering granite cliffs bear petroglyphs left by the people that originally inhabited the area. On the other side are their burial caves. According to Lee, “It’s about the interplay of where land meets water. It’s such a different experience to see an island from the water, rather than seeing the island from within the island. It’s a piece of land surrounded by water that’s deeply forested. You only see as far as the next tree when you’re living in the forest and you only see the sky through the openings in the trees. When you get out on the water you can look back at the forested cocoon of the island."

“Hollyhock Garden” was painted by Lee Robinsong between 2000 and 2005 as a celebration of the legendary garden at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre on British Columbia’s Cortes Island.

The land that is now Hollyhock was originally carved out of the wilderness for a homestead in the 1920s. With constant care, a garden has been cultivated there ever since. Framed by a forest of pines, cedars and firs, the garden is a living canvas, an ever-changing painting of the seasons that
reflects the cycle of life. In the spirit of the Prairie painter William Kurelek, “Hollyhock Garden” pays tribute to Canadian pioneers, rural life, and the importance of living with and from the land. The image reflects lat afternoon in midsummer as the shadows of the surrounding forest start to cover the garden. Raspberries are in full production, and garlic and peas are ready to be harvested along with an abundance of lettuce, kale, herbs and flowers. The painting is dedicated to Nori Fletcher, Hollyhock’s visionary gardener, who has given the garden form since 1984.

“The Intimate Persuasion of the Timeless” is a portrait of the land now known as the Hollyhock Retreat Centre.

In the early 1980s, shortly after moving to British Columbia’s Cortes Island and co-founding the Hollyhock Farm, Lee walked a seven-circuit labyrinth into the grass of the Hollyhock beach. In classical understanding, the labyrinth is a map of life that brings one closer to and then farther away from the centre, until the end of the labyrinth – and one’s life – is reached. Walking the labyrinth is a reflection of one‘s own mortality and the finite nature of life. The Kiakum rock is an erratic deposited by the glaciers of the last ice age. This huge piece of granite has been a guest on the land for over ten thousand years. Lee juxtaposed these two elements of the special piece of land where he lived in “The Intimate Persuasion of the Timeless” . Together they spark each other into the language of a prayer, offering a reminder of the sacred and a celebration of being alive. While the labyrinth and life are finite, the rock sticks around after everyone is gone. Both are timeless and very intimate aspects of being human and in the moment.

In 1991, Lee Robinsong moved from a house by the ocean to a cabin deep in the forests of British Columbia’s Cortes Island. With the change in location came a change in perspective. Life by the ocean offers long views to the horizon and an outward focus. Life in his forest cabin enveloped Lee, turning his perspective inward.

Climbing up onto neighbour ing bluffs and looking over the forest to the ocean let Lee reflect on both. “South Cortes Blufflands under Mackerel Sky” brings the outward view together with the inner. It’s a meeting point reflecting the patterns of the sky in the mossy landscape of the granite bluffs below. The original four-foot canvas was painted in the depths of winter, Lee says, when the memory of midsummer heat and the scent of pine and ocean breezes brought light and hope to the short, dark days of winter.