Lisa Cristinzo – Toronto/Tkaronto/Toronto in a neighbourhood bordered by Little Jamaica and Corso Italia, known as Oakwood Village . Thousands of years ago, this area was an ancient glacial shoreline of Lake Iroquois and the Traditional Treaty Lands of the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee and Dish with One Spoon Wampum.

Beans, Pumpkins, and Squashes, all vining types (summer 2025)

These seeds helped me make connections between growing food and plein air painting in my garden, as I attempted to work in co-authorship with the environment and my local community (human and more-than-human). I wanted to develop a reciprocal plein air painting practice that grows edible plants around my painting stretchers, while in the process of painting. This is an attempt to ethically make painting about land, without mimicking the colonial anthropogenic need for resource extraction from nature, even as an artist simply taking in a scene to paint. Also I used the seeds while participating in an online international program hosted by “The Material Way,” where I have been learning about methodologies and the technical aspects of material creation, specifically in the creation of bio-based plastics. For the final phase of the program, I exhibited a series of biodegradable paintings made from apple-sourced bioplastics derived from the elderly apple trees on the property of Canadian Landscape Painter, Doris McCarthy. I used the vining beans to run up against the apple bioplastics, willow charcoal, to leave marks.

The seeds taught me a lot about painting, and slowing down. My paintings will take as long as a growing season to complete, allowing me to slow down my painting, mirroring the process of growing and the structural supports needed between plants and the painting themselves. For example, butternut squash seeds take 105 days to yield fruit, in parallel my painting will take 105 days to complete.