Micro/Macro | Oct 10 – Nov 4

My paintings are an exploration of a human experience of the natural world.

I spent my early childhood in the Caribbean, and themes from that time still run through my work. As a child I loved the places where two worlds met, – as when reef plunges into shadowy blue – qualities colliding and uniting.

I moved to Canada 25 years ago and it has taken a long time for me to begin to be able to absorb the enormous scale of the land, but it has started to appear in my work -in fact I’m finding it rather addictive. I like to use shapes and images that are both organic and primal, that help me to feel rooted in something natural and universal. I try to maintain an ambiguity as to size in my paintings, allowing the mind to slide between the micro and macro.

I often use processes that invite chance, allowing ideas to emerge from the behaviour of wet paint, creating new avenues to explore and elaborate on. Chance becomes intention – as through nudging and editing what appears, I produce the paintings I want to make.

I used to work exclusively on paper, using its porosity to bring luminescence to washes of colour. I am now trying to create luminosity on canvas, and combine it with a more robust use of paint, and through that, to find new ways to work with light, weight and space. I want to give a sense of many layers, a sense of space being a substance not just a ‘gap’, and of ‘swimming’ through the space between those layers.