With Covid-19 imposing restrictions and interrupting routines, the Whyte Museum launched a trial artist-in-residency invitation to local artist Michael Corner to spend the summer working out of the Mather Cabin. Located on the Whyte Museum property, the cabin is noticeable for it’s whitewashed exterior. Once part of the boat house operation located across the Bow River, the Mather Cabin was situated close to where the new Nancy Pauw pedestrian bridge will span. 

 

During Corner’s first few days in the cabin, nightmarish spiders and bygone anecdotes unsettled the artist but he soon settled into a rhythmic pattern of painting subject’s familiar in his practice. Corner’s paintings of exterior views capture elements of both the Whyte home, Sinclair and Peyto cabins with pathways through the wooded lawn taking the viewer farther afield. The human figure features predominantly in his interior scenes, making the cabin space appear larger than its minimal dimensions. Finally, Corner’s paintings of figures submerged in black represent an historic event when the river overflowed its banks and flooded the space.