During 2019 and 2020 I made drawings and paintings after revisiting a body of work (pastel drawings)  made in 1995-2000 while traveling in Nova Scotia.  In Nova Scotia, I had a disorienting experience of objects (bales of hay) scattered across an expansive ground  set against a backdrop of  sea and sky.   Moved by the objects uncertainty and openness I became more interested in the spatial ambiguity rather than the landscape itself.   I find myself  once again fascinated by a space that fluctuates, that is not deep and not shallow.  Working with space, light , darkness and volume , the bales dematerialzie and become spheres.  The paintings are oil on canvas and the drawings are made on Rieves BFK paper.

In the previous body of work I used volumnous black spheres to describe relationships in space.
In this body of work I have opened up the space creating more light and airiness; breath.
The new drawings are oil pastel on primed Reves BFK paper.

The play of shadows from light streaming in three large windows on the south side of my studio located in an old textile mill have strongly influenced these paintings.

I have been exploring painting in a reductive manner by limiting my palette to monochromatic color.  Layers of muted grayed down hues appear to be absorbed into the canvas with some edges that dissolve into each other and some that are hard.


          The idea that light has a presence and thingness to it intrigues me.

         My body feels the light the moment it touches me--before I touch it.

         The air knows when the light enters.

         The light know when the air does.

I hope that my work transcends the physical qualities of the painting as the viewer looks into the space.  It is not purely minimal but involves a range of optical and psychological effects.  It is a personal reflection of my experiences of things known and unknown, a negotiation between emotion and the intellect.

 

 The ambiguous spatial effect of land, sea and sky merging together on the farms of Prince Edward Island lead to drawings and paintings of circles  flattened into spheres. 

Drawing has always been a part of my studio practice.  It is a visual way of thinking about an idea but also an entity unto itself.