recent works

memory sometimes

mixed media on cradled board: acrylic, plaster, pencil crayon - 24x24x1.5 in.
Currently showing at Metchosin Art Pod

Artist Statement: In response to my mother's ongoing dementia and to my own aging I have been exploring memory and what it is to remember. There is an ethereal quality to memory, to what we store in our minds and bodies. Things rise to the surface of our awareness then slowly, or sometimes rapidly, disintegrate. In "memory sometimes" a swirl of blue fog is a backdrop to the binary code for the word "memory". Overlaid on this, a few memories struggle to the surface. Binary code has a long history and is associated with information storage. How is our memory stored? Can some colour, texture and pattern be enough to store it? How can it be retrieved? In a short poem called "memory sometimes", I explore what it is to be surrounded by a new, beautiful landscape and my efforts to save the feelings and connection I have to it. It begins: "I remember last week's view out the window. the blue habit of it. how it changes - fluid as what it contains". I continue to explore.

past remains

mixed media on cradled board: acrylic, papers, pencil crayon, pastel -20x20x1.5 in.

Part of the Palimpsest - The Not so Blank Slate art show at Metchosin Art Pod in 2024 and Juror's choice award winner

Statement: The title "past remains" refers to memory and its fluidity. For the past four years I've been witnessing my mother's transformation in personality and expression as her dementia has deepened. An additional influence is Sarah McLachlan's "I will Remember You" which rises in my memory when I explore the feeling and expression of "remembering".

lune, rising

mixed media on cradled board: acrylic, papers, ink - 14x14x1.75 inches

Goldfinch Arts Centre put out a call for reimagined book cover art. I chose to submit a piece for a book I am working on, a collection of poems that feature or involve the moon. Word association had me riffing on "moon" and I soon found the rhyming "loon" and "lune". "Lune" is French for moon and lune in geometry involves a crescent shaped figure bounded by two arcs of circles or more simply, a crescent shape. Then again, "lunes" is an old word associated with fits of madness (make of that what you will). The images in the piece developed intuitively including the jumble of letters from the poems I"m working on - all forming and rising up. From a work in progress: moon song/calls to the wild in us/highlights the pulse/pulls us closer/to sync with a chorus of stars

Recent experiments and works with mixed media - in redevelopment

memory sometimes

past remains

wild woman comes to talk

origin story 1

lune, rising

in hand

a summer place to gather

what the raven said