Tarragon's landscape practice swings between two axes. Barriefield, Ontario, is a village swallowed up on three sides by the encroaching city of Kingston (the fourth is the waters of Green Bay). Compton, Surrey, is a tiny speck in the scant miles separating the city of Guildford from the large town of Godalming, and is obliged to share those miles with several other communities.
Neither village has its own centre, or post office, or corner store. Their denizens are not villagers but transplanted urbanites.
Paradoxically, both locations in Tarragon's paintings become deserted zones. There are signs of habitation, but no inhabitants. He has removed them from their urban confines and replanted them in the remote places of the earth, accessible only to, perhaps, intrepid dog-sledders.
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