Continually open to new possibilities for representation, I create images using found objects, photographs, hand made paper, words…. These images are presented in the context of assemblages under glass or as site specific installations. My paintings are vibrant in colour with surfaces rich in texture.

My images come from the realm of imagination and dream, the initial impulse for my work. I have selected the pieces below to describe my creative process in terms of the use of different materials and the ideas that surface for me when creating.

 

 

This assemblage piece (19"X26") evolved over several years and came together to suggest a very powerful dream I had about 10 years ago.

I am at a writer's festival with my mother and brother am looking for a place to display my work. We are near a lake. I come upon a group of peers who are close in age. They have a baby whale in their midst and are discussing how to find its mother. I have a sense that she is near. If I stay still I can feel her presence and she won't be afraid. The group decides that I am the one to go in search of her. They give me a map.

Upon waking I realized the map was a labyrinth. It has inspired my interest in labyrinths and soon after I began to include them in my imagery. The dream also inspires my sense of my art as soul maps for people and for communities. They invite new possibilities and discoveries and have been said to inspire renewed creativity. That is exciting to me.

This piece is created using a found broom, hand made paper, sticks, papyrus, and a photogragh. The broom piece was found on a street in Big Rapids, Michigan.The rather shadowy photo is of a hanging tent that I created and hung over the pond while at Atlin Art Centre in Atlin B.C.

I choose to use found pieces that have been transformed by the elements because their original use is unclear. It is at this point that the object suggests renewed possibilites. Scanning the beach where I live in Goderich, Ontario on the shores of Lake Huron I find a lot of amazing things that have been altered by the waves.

 

This assemblage piece (19"X26"),evolved from the spontaneous combination of two pieces that I created from hand made paper . I enjoy the paper making process because of its endless possibilities.I sometimes create relief forms in clay and cast them in plaster to make a mold and then fill the mold with hand made paper.

The winged piece is created from pieces of hand made paper that contain ashes from burnt letters--in an act of clearing away the old. It is stitched together with thread and painted with acrylic.

The bowl-like piece in the lower portion of the picture plane is a metal screen covered in paper pulp. It is stitched with embroidery floss around the outer edge and in the centre triangle. I painted it with acrylic paint.

After these two elements were in place the orange and red brushstrokes were added. Within the jetstream trail of red read the words reclaim, renovate, restore, renew, release. I found myself singing the U.S. national anthem when putting it together thus the title. I realize now that it is a healing image for the events of September 11, 2001.

 

This painting is 4'X6'. It grew from the image of mother and child that was a stone sculpture on a Canadian overseas postage stamp.

When I start a painting I create a layer of texture using hand made paper, string, hand cast paper, paper pulp, acrylic modelling paste, found elements, sometimes I incorporate photographs. I think of this as my initial drawing or sketch.

I paint with success when I let the dreaming mind take over. This means that I sometimes cannot explain my images for a long time. Sometimes it isn't mine to explain but someone else's.

I name this piece Waking the Dead because of the figure along the bottom of the painting. It is in honour of my ancestral realm, family members who have died. The middle form was initiated the night my father in law died. I am able to have family visits in dreams; a joyous act of waking the dead.