Home Stretch

The hamlet of Assumption, located just south of Peterborough, is dominated by the long arc and quiet monumentality of a drumlin. This gentle sloping land mass has been a silent witness to many stories since its formation over 10,000 years ago.[1] Across its expanse, the day’s orbit casts flickering light within longer cycles of seasonal renewal, abundance, and rest as years spin into centuries, into millennia, into eons. The arced horizon heralds the cycles of seasons and the rising and setting sun as they transform the surface in surprising ways, yet the familiar curve persists. For Moore, it is a touchstone.

Nestled off the drumlin’s eastern flank is a wetland with a trail passing through. This land has been P. S. Moore’s home since 1967. He’s walked these pathways almost daily, noticing the rich, dense wetland forest and its biodiverse habitat for all kinds of creatures, giving attention to both the minute and the monumental.

The exhibition includes an ekphrastic[2] suite bringing together fragments from the poetic writings of Hollay Ghadery, an award-winning Iranian-Canadian writer and the current Poet Laureate of Scugog, Ontario, with images from the artist’s trail walks. Home Stretch is a visual love poem of this place and its adjacent terrains, one timeless and enduring, the other vulnerable to the elements: heat, wind, ice, drought, and rain.

P. S. Moore is a visual artist and arts educator primarily working in landscape painting and printmaking. Moore has a BFA from the University of Guelph and certification through The Royal Conservatory’s Learning Through the Arts program. He has received grant support from the Ontario Arts Council for numerous arts projects he developed with children and young people as a result of his extensive experience in education and mentorship.

From 2019 to 2022, Moore was an Artist Educator in Residence at Beverley School in Toronto, working with students in Grades 1-6 as part of a collaborative approach to supporting young learners with multiple exceptionalities. His experience as an arts educator has been an important part of his practice, connecting artmaking with learning, community, and individual expression.

Moore is past Chairman of the Board at Artspace, one of Canada’s longest running artist-run centres. His work has been included in numerous group and solo shows including the 2023 juried exhibition, Seams and Strata, at the AGP, the 2022 multi-arts festival Circus Repurpose / Erring at King George, held at the former King George Elementary School in Peterborough. In 2016, he presented the solo exhibition song of the cataract, a site-specific installation that considered the AGP’s lower ramp gallery as a river flowing toward Little Lake. His practice includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, and stage set design, and explores the connection between individual identity and landscape.

[1] Though drumlins, a derivation of the Irish droimnin meaning little ridge or small hill, can be found across the globe, the Peterborough drumlin field is the largest in central Canada, formed over 10,000 years ago beneath the massive Laurentide ice sheet. Joseph I. Boyce and Nicholas Eyles, “Drumlins carved by deforming till streams below the Laurentide ice sheet,” in Geology. v. 19 (8), (August 1991): pp. 787-790.

[2] Ekphrastic poetry, referring to poems that describe works of visual art, comes from the Greek ekphrasis, in which descriptive speech is so skillful that it brings forth the subject in vivid visual detail. University of Chicago, Theories of Media: Glossary. https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/ekphrasis.htm, (2007): last accessed: September 29, 2026.