In November of 1849, French painter Gustave Courbet wrote the following account in a note to  two of his friends.  

Dawn Haywood 

“I had taken our carriage to go to the Chateau of Saint-Denis to paint a landscape. Near  Maisières I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the road. One rarely encounters  the most complete expression of poverty, so right there on the spot I got an idea for a painting. I  made a date to meet them in my studio the following morning, and since then I have painted  my picture. On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over his work, his sledgehammer raised,  his skin parched by the sun, his head shaded by a straw hat; his trousers, of coarse material,  are completely patched; and in his cracked sabots you can see his bare heels sticking out of  socks that were once blue. On the other side is a young man with swarthy skin, his head  covered with dust; his disgusting shirt all in tatters reveals his arms and parts of his back; a  leather suspender holds up what is left of his trousers, and his mud-caked leather boots show  gaping holes on every side. The old man is kneeling, the young man is standing behind him  energetically carrying a basket of broken rocks. Alas! In this class, this is how one begins, and  that is how one ends”. 

Cited in Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Civil Struggle 1848-1871 (Chicago-London: The  University of Chicago Press, 2007), 158-9.  

Before the Stones Were Broken is a series of oil paintings completed by 2nd year painting students at UBC Okanagan under the instruction of Connor Charlesworth. Introduced through ecologist/ philosopher Timothy Morton’s  concept of hyperobjects, and Gustave Courbet’s painting “The Stone Breakers”, students were tasked to compose small oil paintings that consider elements of time, composition, and land.  In an effort to draw distinction between the real and the sensual, students were encouraged to  approach these forms through Rudolph Arnheim’s compositional notions of centres, gravity,  and weight, in combination with sensual considerations of surface, colour, and material. 

Participating artists include Connor Charlesworth, Rain Doody, Mackenzie Fleetwood-Anderson, Meg Furlot, Talia Gagnon, Dawn Haywood, Neha Iyer, Sheilina John, Hailey Johnson, Madi May, Emily Mills, Phil Patrick, Sarah Prentice, Maya Taki, Amelia Vegt, Wenjing Wang, Peony Wong, and Bernice Yam. 

Before the Stones Were Broken will be on view in the Members’ Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from March 15 - April 6 2024.

Before the Stones Were Broken, Members Gallery, 2024.