Artist Statement 2020

 

22 Feb 2020 – Just completed 10 painting for a potential customer.  Here is my artist statement for this project.

As an artist who works in Hamilton but lives in Mississauga, I feel the energy of old and new architecture. While Hamilton has a very long urban history, Mississauga is filled with the sense of the new; that history is being created today. As a result, my art practice is attracted to open spaces, hard lines and geometrical shapes of modern architecture and urban landscape design. A blurring of colours or boundaries has no place in my art practice; my urban world is clearly defined.

For me, a walk through downtown Mississauga is to be surrounded by movement and stillness, like waves washing over large boulders on a beach. Taking my inspiration from the “gestural” black and white painting of Franz Kline (1910-1962) and the “still” black, grey, and white paintings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970), this latest body of work strives to tell the experience of movement through open (white and grey) spaces around the black shapes of urban structures.

My paintings also strive to match our human scale by engaging the viewer as an equal (in size). Furthermore, the paintings are intended to be part of the space, not separated or isolated from the room or the viewer. As a result, frames are neither needed nor desired. A frame is a fence, and these paintings are against anything that might prevent the painting from reaching out to the viewer

0o0