Lori Langille studied Fine Arts at the University of Ottawa before going on to the Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCAD U) in Toronto for painting and illustration. She graduated from OCAD U’s Communications and Design program with a concentration in Editorial Illustration. Since then she has worked as a freelance illustrator for private and public sector clients. She also runs Lori Langille Studio, her online stationery shop, and exhibits her personal collage work in both solo and group shows.
“The starting point for my Bread and Roses digital collage is the Dutch painting Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase (1650 – 1683), originally attributed to Rachel Ruysch but now considered to be by Jan Davidsz de Heem. I revisited it after reading an essay by Rebecca Solnit that mentions a 1910 speech by Helen Todd, a campaigner for women’s right to vote. Todd’s famous quote—’Bread for all, and Roses too’—reminds us that while we need bread to feed the body, we also need roses to feed our souls.
“It is all too easy to find depictions of war and conflict, but finding a depiction of flowers that looked like they could truly feed the soul was what drew me to this piece as a starting point. These flowers radiate confidence and power—ones that can conceivably nourish and sustain, rather than simply be decorative. It’s also a testament to how extraordinarily successful Ruysch’s work was/is. Having a male painter’s work passed off as a Ruysch, when so often in art history it’s just the opposite, tells us how respected she was as an artist, both during her lifetime and afterwards.
“My collage explores the struggle to reconcile these basic needs of physical and spiritual sustenance in the world, showing first the ideal of having both (the happy group in the Garden of Love), and the all too frequent reality—the scene of war, which takes both these needs away. “
