Abstract Work:
I love paint and its possibilities (texture, colour, meaning, discovery). I am drawn to abstraction because of this love for the medium itself. I enjoy the challenge of aesthetic exploration through varying textures, colours, and modes of application, as I seek to express something beyond just images or words, something that ushers the viewer into a deeper experience.
I find my inspiration almost everywhere in the world around me. Nature is a big source of inspiration, the colour palettes and textures that occur naturally. Although many of my current pieces explore more exotic, vibrant colour combinations, I am hoping to explore more neutral colour palettes in future. I am also inspired by people, their sense of style or home decor. Paint itself is also inspiring to me, playing with it, learning the different ways I can apply it or manipulate it for varying effects.
Ultimately painting is an exploration for me — an exploration of physics through the properties of paint, light reflectivity, changing consistencies and building layers; an exploration of colour and its interactions; an exploration of emotion and experience as I see what emerges from my paintings, and how that draws out an experience in each viewer. There is an intangible quality in how we experience the world, and I seek to explore and create conversations about that side of life through my pieces.
Life Breaks Through spans from 2009 to the 2015. The first piece, Creation (2009) was one of my first abstract experiments and I was immediately smitten with the challenge of combining colours (often directly on the canvas) without any system like I had used when painting representationally. It was more intuitive, I had to feel out how to combine colour rather than having it prescribed from an image. I enjoyed figuring out how I could combine colours and transition between them, blending or letting contrasting colours sit on top of one another. I also found the texture from paint build-up to be curious and it added a new dimension to my painting, especially as I began to use palette knives as my tools for paint application instead of brushes. I found as I created my pieces, vibrant colour began to dominate the palette and I naturally gravitated toward active compositions over static ones, where the colours were moving in and out, around each other.
The majority of these pieces were created during one of the darkest periods of my personal life, as a kind of prayer for hope, brighter days, and ultimately new life from death. I realized I wanted (or needed) my pieces to be active, living, and life-giving. I believe abstract paintings can communicate as much as representational paintings, it just may not be as obvious or easy to put into words. This intangible experience is fascinating to me, and learning to communicate feeling through more technical aspects of balance in colour composition and movement in a piece is ultimately my guiding marker.
Tropics is a body of smaller works that was born out of Life Breaks Through in 2015. It is a playful exploration of a new colour palette, with similar texture and mark-making from my earlier works. The result is mostly abstract pieces with some departures into abstracted representation. This work is less about grasping for something that felt far off, and is instead about celebration -- the brighter days had come!
Layers is a new body of work that I am developing. I have long been fascinated by layers: topographical maps, growth rings on trees, layers in stones such as agate... It speaks to me of the processes of growth and development in nature, processes that are reflected in each human life. I want to explore that formation process in this body of work. I am also challenged by the reality that often we do not see that formation unless we get a different perspective, a cross-section or a view from up above... Perspective changes us.
Representational Work:
I first discovered my love of art and painting through representational work and it continues to hold a special place in my heart. I try to make a practice of returning to this work, as I love the challenge of interpreting what I see and capturing it in paint. It requires careful consideration, patience, and discipline. Through this process the subject matter is given greater significance than before, through care and attention to detail, time invested, and the permanence that comes from immortalizing something in paint. I find it rewarding when I can take something seemingly insignificant and help my viewers to see it anew or consider it differently because of its painted image.