Series

Figures

Figure studies & portraits.

Palimpsest

On a brisk February night in 1999 a live 1,250 pound bull was visited upon the grunt Gallery.

A cave painting was projected onto the bull and the smooth, angular gallery walls. Ancient myths and stories were re-told. We talked about bison, bulls, and palimpsests (and nature & culture).

The thing I remember the most from that evening was the presence of the enormous bull and the respectful hush of the audience. Here we all were, crammed into this small gallery with a massive unpredictable creature, and a shared a sense of reverence.

Capitals and Columns

This series was provoked by fantastic scenes of wrecked car mountains spilling into a river which was lined with log booms – old growth forests – half buried in the intertidal mud.

The River

I started working on Coastal & River boats when I was twenty-five and was done with them by my forty-forth birthday. I spent a lot of time in the North Arm of the Fraser and witnessed a lot of changes to the natural environment due to industrialization.

Combines

This series began after we completed the stacked car capital for Trans Am Totem in 2015.

It started with a few oil on canvas paintings suggesting a salt water ocean in relation to a turbid rip tide. I wanted change the subject from nature in state of flux to nature altered by humans. So, I traded my stretched canvas supports for car hoods, refrigerators and dryer doors.

Bush Dynasty & Co.

I began experimenting with ceramics while teaching drawing and painting at Capilano University. The ceramics instructor, Sam Kwan, was expert in glaze technology and he helped me experiment with a range of different glazes. A green celedon glaze was my favourite.

Around that time the USA had recently invaded Iraq (on the rationale of a lie), hence the name of this series of work. These ceramic pieces led to other 2 & 3D work.

Ships

“Now you ask “What’s this romantic boy
Who laments what’s done and gone?”
There was no romance on a cold winter ocean and the gale sang an awful song”

– Lyric from Fisherman’s Wharf by Stan Rogers

This lyric conjures a laugh about an Art World Chorus I’ve heard chanting “painting is done and gone” … and I confess to singing Sea Shanties and painting pictures of ships.

Cruising Arcadia

This is a collection of landscape paintings in a prototypical suburban setting: a parking lot. The mobile ‘homes‘ frame nature. Outside in and inside out.

Landmarks

Most of these paintings are landscapes containing human made objects and architecture.

Water Surfaces