My primary subject matter is the land and what goes on around the land; but also what goes on around the farm and house. In the paintings you could see the fields through the studio windows during the day and night. You can see the fields through the four seasons. In several paintings you can see my favourite Indian red and milky white china set sitting on ploughed fields. In later paintings I dissembled the china patterns, or I have the cups and saucers floating in between the wildflowers, horses, stars and landscape. Dream-like, little stories have been captured in ethereal space, like the Japanese paintings our impressionist painters of the late 1800’s loved so much. The china porcelain that I am attracted to have images of flowers, lanterns, trees, Japanese houses, and distant mountains, figures of women in Japanese kimonos with wide silk sashes, some holding umbrellas. The first painting of this nature was created twelve years ago and the subject has since remained in my repertoire of work. I use oil on canvas, wood, board, paper, ceramic tiles, and some slate. I build all my own stretcher frames and prepare all the surfaces that I paint on.
I have been invited to talk about my work at galleries, radio programs, television interviews, magazine articles and newspaper articles throughout my career. One comment I regularly hear is that my work is colourful and imaginative. Viewers cannot exactly put their “finger” on it, but they state to experience the feeling that they associate with themselves. We all live on this earth and experience other planes of perception to better understand what the unconscious right brain is telling us. I am very much interested in the fourth dimension, environmental philosophy, poetry, science, the universe, spirituality and mystical associations with the natural world including plants, animals and the earth.
Recently I came back from my sixth painting trip in search of a place to live and set up my studio in Conception Bay. Then I went again on my seventh trip, this time to Bay de Verde and Carbonear, in search of the same. It was during this time the went to Wales, U. K. for two weeks of plein air painting experience by the Irish Sea followed by a week in London where I caught up with “what’s new in art at the galleries”. On my eighth trip to Newfoundland in the summer of 2013 I drove to the west coast of Newfoundland taking the ferry from North Sidney Nova Scotia to Port Basques.
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