Creative Process
At the core of it I am a storyteller, in direct speech or through visual metaphor. My artwork is not consciously concerned with issues outside of a personal and regional narrative that attempts to cue the universal. If any greater meaning can be attached to what I do, it is something the process has tricked me into. I am a veteran of my form who simply has the ability to paint and continues to find excuses to make paintings.
Painting is my main form of expression, but not the only one. I do performance work and installation pieces that include painting, and reference the inspirations behind my pictures. Regardless of subject matter or medium, I create objects or events that are com
posit in nature, multiple visual languages that are overhauled and collided. I prefer visual narratives that convey the shattered and mediated, but still hold, within the armature of landscape, the romantic ideal of the rugged or the pastoral.
In many ways I am a reluctant traditionalist that appreciates both the delicate antique notion of craft, and the elasticity of contemporary visual expression. My work has offered me the opportunity to consider the former while joining the conversation within the later.
Recently, I have begun to work extensively, but not exclusively, on figurative pieces, which include a series of figures from above (see recent paintings), and newer composit naratives that place figures into the landscape. To some extent this represents a return to the tendencies of my earliest paintings. After many years of pure landscape imagery, with its inevitable focus on the horizon line, this figurative work provides a fascinating departure.
Southwestern Ontario Gothic - descriptive post script
In the last few years I have developed the conceit that my way of working has parallel aesthetics to the literary tradition of this region. The theory of this connection is still developing, but is solid enough to be recognised by curatorial professionals within my commuinity to describe my work and the work of others
