Art Cards
February 16, 2025
Having defined drawing for myself, painting more or less became almost everything else. Wet on wet, wet on dry, and dry on wet media all feel like painting to me. The focus is definitely more on areas of colour rather than linearity. Where I use drawing more often to define and model something else, painting feels more about massing-in…a process in itself
I can’t cite the origin of this quote, but I recall reading a review of post-expressionist paintings…”Remember that, before a painting is anything else, it is one area of colour set against another.”
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
Painting also implies a greater investment of time and intent. Preparing supports whether I work on canvas or paper, mixing the paint (in high school I was taught to work from primarily colours, white and black), and setting aside enough time to work so that the paint won’t be wasted.
When I started painting again in 2018, I also took a page out of my drawing playbook and learned slowly how to paint with a sense of play, of improvisation. This was a hard transition for me to make as I’d spent most of my life thinking of drawing as preparatory work leading up to a finished product – the painting. But I soon got over that and set myself up so that I could paint a lot, exploring many different ideas and techniques quickly and efficiently.
Do not try. Do.
I made dozens of small masonite boards to which I could tape watercolour paper. I thinned down my acrylic paint so I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time making “this” specific colour or viscosity of paint. Instead I worked with liquid primary colours, black and white, and allowed the layering of the paint layers to develop colour complexity.
Paintings would evolve as I worked, making a single stroke or taking a single action and then allowing that board to dry on a drying rack at which point I’d take another action or make another stroke. I’d have 10-12 paintings on the go at a time which allowed me to cover a lot of ground, but also worked really well with my schedule. I’d take a few quick actions and move on to other things I needed to do that day while I waited for the paint to dry. Through this process I got a sense of the kind of things I wanted to see and invariably (though slowly) this process led me in directions I found really gratifying.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
These pictures emerged from the “Sublimate” drawings (2019-present). They continue to be an exploration –
“Affirmations” is a woodblock print done in the Japanese style (木版画 or 木 版 感). I’ve
11”x14” relief print on washi paper. Mounted and matted. In the summer of 2023, I
Back in 1998 I was flipping through a pile of magazines in search of material
These drawings came about quite by accident. I was on a plane to Toronto in
Well this is a welcome bit of news. A collection of my recent work will
My first experience with silkscreen printing was in high school, printing rude shirts off for
Six of my pictures from various grid series are currently on display at GVPL Bruce
Kids really are the best. They live life like they really mean every minute of
Six of my recent paintings will be going up at Victoria International Airport on Monday
This one’s hard to explain. It’s one of those times when very disparate ideas come together.
In Russian, “sputnik” means “Satellite”, or “Fellow Traveller”. I’ve been fascinated by the story of Sputnik
The name of this series comes from the progressive layering of thin layers of ink. I’d
Let’s get the title of this series out of the way. Jill thought they looked like
The word matrix means a lot of different things to different people. I know the
I can remember visiting the AGO (Art Gallery if Ontario) in my early twenties and falling
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I gratefully acknowledge that the place I work is situated on the unceded lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, who have hunted and gathered here for thousands of years, and whose relationship to the land continues to this day.