Statement
STATEMENT
Water, or fluidity, is a pervasive theme that runs through so much of my work. I live in the Pacific Northwest, an area renowned for the unenviable amounts of rain that falls each year. To live here one often develops a love-hate relationship with this sort of weather. And inevitably this overabundance of rain informs much of the work I create.
In spite of its possible negative connotations, there is a universal appeal to rain soaked city streets that evokes something entirely visceral. So often you will find this in the film industry which goes to great lengths to recreate that saturated-with-rain aesthetic for good reason. Those rain slicked city streets reflect so much of ourselves back at us it’s like peering in a distorted mirror reminding us of those places we inhabit that are both imaginary and real.
Throughout my work, water is implicitly identified either through subject or in the way the paint lies on the surface. It becomes an out of control kaleidoscope of light and colour infused with what we know and what we think we know, or remember.
And memory is elusive. I like to think of these paintings in terms of layers of memory lying one over top of the other in such a way that they eventually resemble something recognizable. Whether it is true or not, it doesn’t really matter so long as it speaks to a collective understanding, or recognition, of what is seen.