"All That We Can Take", A New Solo Exhibition by Kyle Scheurmann

In his newest exhibition, All That We Can Take, artist and activist Kyle Scheurmann combines painting and environmental activism to confront the consequences of resource extraction and the urgent need to protect Canada’s remaining ancient forests.

The exhibition was inspired by Scheurmann’s return to Tree Farm Licence (TFL) 46 on Vancouver Island in April, where he discovered that an ancient forest he had worked to protect through landback blockades and legislative efforts had been logged for industrial resource extraction. This discovery became the starting point for a body of work shaped by grief, uncertainty, and a renewed sense of urgency.

Building on the Canadian landscape painting tradition, All That We Can Take challenges idealized representations of nature and asks what landscape painting can communicate in the face of today’s ecological crisis. The exhibition offers a deeply personal response to the destruction of endangered ecosystems while examining the complex relationships between land, industry, government, and environmental protection.

Scheurmann uses the landscape not only as a subject but also as a material, incorporating sawdust collected from TFL 46, cedar ash, fireweed flowers, sand, and charred animal remains into his meticulously rendered oil and mixed-media paintings. These materials serve as physical remnants of the landscapes and events depicted, establishing a direct material connection between the works and the environmental loss they contemplate.

Scheurmann’s commitment to conservation extends beyond the studio. Through his Art Auction for Old Growth, he has raised nearly $150,000 in support of the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation and its work to advance Indigenous-led protection plans and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.

The opening reception will take place at Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin on Thursday, November 5, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with the artist in attendance. An artist talk, hosted by Katie Marks of the ArtBeat Podcast, will follow on Saturday, November 28, at 1 p.m.

Artist statement:

Some of the ancient forests that I’ve worked to save while living at blockades have now been cut. The enthusiasm, community building and tactical planning don’t always equate to lasting protection. But this spring, I visited an active old-growth cutblock at the site of a forest I’d been trying to save the legal way, using colonial system processes to initiate a permanent, government-approved protection. But the loggers still won.

It was a forest deep in Tree Farm Licence (TFL) #46 on southern Vancouver Island. It’s not that the strategizing, budgeting or planning were flawed. Everything was in place to establish a new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), just as the federal government now recognizes as the most effective way towards protecting endangered ecosystems. We just simply didn’t get the money in time.

So, in late April, as fire season sparked early on the mountain, I hiked about a kilometre past the newly built cadmium red gate and into the detritus. What I saw there didn’t look much different than any of the other cutblocks I’ve scaled:

Dense pyres of tree parts rose out of the excavator-tracked earth.

Mechanical teeth waited along the blast-rock road for their operators to return in the morning.

Tall trees held scared Jays in their canopies, branded with neon tape looped around their torsos.

But what I felt there was new.

I thought I’d learned the hard lesson that a blockade at its best can only save a forest for a few hours or days - or maybe if you’re really lucky, a whole summer. I naively believed that working directly with the nation in a thoughtfully budgeted way would result in some patience on the other side of the negotiation. But in the end, the bid from the logging company was too lucrative for our charity-backed proposal and in a few short afternoons, thousands of years of continuous growth were cut, stacked, sorted and sold.

This exhibition is a…