|
I grew up in Calgary and Drumheller, Alberta, but I was ‘born’ 22 years later when I moved to my current home on the west coast of British Columbia. These places, their often divergent but equally inspiring geographies and cultures, have become woven, fused, and often even clashed like titans throughout my life. Finally, they have come to inform and serve as a mechanism to extrude the work in this current exhibition.
This new body of abstract collage and mixed media work is a personal exploration that encompasses some larger universal concepts. Without trying to define the specific connections, the processes and the images in this exhibition approach a big picture that is attached to, but not defined by, concepts of love, empowerment, identity, culture, spirituality, humour and gentleness. They also explore the illusions of “belief” and “difference”, the evil engendered by the belief in difference, the power of fear and shame, stories, memory, becoming, opening to all that we are, connections and sameness, healing both in terms of self and cultures,… and gratitude. All of that is here somewhere between the layers of paint and paper and process,... As usual, I owe a debt of thanks to the era of modernity and my painterly heroes, Twombly of course, and this time Rauschenberg in particular.
|
