Artist Statement
Artist’s Statement
In Grade 3, I won a prize for a drawing called "Playing Tag". My parents should have taken it as a warning, I was destined to be an artist and not only that I was fated to draw the human figure. Fast forward to high school where everyone thought I was headed for a law career, except me. Fortunately my guidance councillor thought my marks in art showed more promise than the rest of my classes. Onward to art college, where the choice of specialty required the possibility of employment on graduation; so much for being an "artist". It did however give me some solid tools that would stand me in good stead when I finally hit the studio. University proved more creative and gave me my first taste of sculpture. For the next few years, art was put on the back burner. When the studio is the corner of your bedroom there isn’t a whole lot of potential, especially when your inspiration has more to do with commercial viability and "isms" that look good but are much more difficult to understand. And then it all changed in a pale blue Camaro, half way between Montreal and Ottawa. In first year design at OCA, the concept of the golden mean, the ideal proportion was planted. For years it had percolated and that evening gazing out the window at the misty landscape the subject and the concept came together. Add another first year art school lesson in watercolour application and there was a new focus and purpose to my studio practice. For the next ten years I explored the Canadian landscape using the Greek’s magic formula, adding to it the occasional medieval church screen, a touch of surealism and finally the human figure. In the final solo show at my Edmonton dealer the work started out as a straight landscape show but slowly the figures started to invade the spaces until the last piece became a bodyscape, more Pearlstein than Colville. At this point the figures are based on photographic references, and not my own. Since it seemed that that was where the work was going it was time to get back into the studio and try and remember my basic figure drawing from art school. Unfortunately, there wasn’t that much there to retrieve and a couple of frustrating years of trying to do it on my own just wasn’t getting anywhere. Then I met a wonderful artist teacher, Bev Tosh, and my work took a 180 degree turn and the work became about the exploration of the figure and the design elements became a subliminal under structure, rather than the overt framework it had been for the past decade.
That was almost 20 years ago and the exploration continues. Unfortunately, the audience for figurative art is not extensive and venues for exhibitions of the genre need to be created more often than found. However the excitement of going into a studio with a model and capturing the spirit of that figure on paper, in clay or on film continues to make the quest worthwhile and that nine year old boy, who drew the picture of himself standing by his easel painting a mountain sunset hasn’t lost the wonder of trying to be an artist.