Table Residency: Bryn Ludlow & Rose Montgomery-Whicher

Artist Statement: Bryn Ludlow PhD

This body of work explores the five stages of endings as described by William Bridges in Transitions (2019), through the lens of personal trauma and recovery. In October 2024, I was in a major MVA while cycling, resulting in multiple fractures and a concussion that affected my speech. As I moved through months of rehabilitation, I turned to art to process the experience—both its physical aftermath and its emotional disorientation.

The mixed media techniques I employed were inspired by “Out of Focus” (Bernardi et al., 2025), an exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie exploring visual distortion and perceptual ambiguity. Working with photographs taken during recovery, I used gel transfers and pencil tracings to gradually obscure or erase their clarity. In doing so, memory itself seemed to fade, mirroring the way trauma dissolves over time without fully disappearing. These manual, methodical processes also functioned as cognitive accommodations—deliberate, low-stimulation strategies that enabled me to continue working while navigating the limitations imposed by post-concussion fatigue.

Two paintings, on “disidentification” and “dismantling,” reflect the existential aspects of healing. A memory of visiting my mother’s small animal lab at Guelph University as a child resurfaced while I was at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, and I created a few paintings there in the evenings. After school I would often peer through her microscope at the blood cells of swans, bears, and other species. I was captivated by the ways these minute forms, across such diverse bodies, carried out the quiet work of repair.

Though this series is titled Endings, it marks a point of transformation. Creating art became a quiet act of release—a way to hold pain, and let it shift.

Artist Statement: Rose Montgomery-Whicher

Here you will see two themes: First, my fascination with how the appearance of a landscape changes as we walk through it. And second, my learning process as I experimented with "tetra pack printing" during my table residency.

My sister lives in a Swiss village nestled against a hill, with views overlooking the city and lake of Zug and the mountains beyond. Her village is connected to others by numerous public footpaths. Consequently, for me, visiting Ellie includes long walks with stops along the way to draw. This June, I focused on the mountains south of where she lives, drawing from various points around her village, Ebertswill, the gardens of the old monastery in nearby Kappel am Albis, and the paths that connect these villages. Look closely, and, among the sketchbook and the prints and drawings, you will see the "Rigi" - with it's easy to spot telecommunications tower at the top - nine times. And there is a curiously flat hill that appears in the sketchbook and on the left side of prints 4 - 9. As a group, I hope these and drawings suggest how a view can change - not only as our vantage point changes - but also as light and weather change.

Having enjoyed etching with traditional materials many years ago during my BFA, this residency gave me the opportunity to explore intaglio printmaking using easy to find, non-toxic materials: tetra packs and water-based ink. Rather than showing only printing that I think are "successful" I have chosen a selection that reflects my process of learning and experimenting with this form of printmaking. Thus, you will see imperfections that reveal how I am learning to balance my eagerness to see the next print with the show, methodical process of printmaking. I look forward to developing this form of printmaking further in conjunction with my drawing practice.