EXHIBITIONS

Paintings in Group show

Salon Des Independants
Montreal, Quebec
2021 DEC 6 - 20

Paintings in Group show

Salon Des Independants
Montreal, Quebec
2021 Feb 14 - 28

Paintings in Group show

Galerie La Chapelle
Bromont, Que.
2020 December

RECENT WORK, montreal, que.
2019 Oct 20 - Nov 3

“RECENT WORK 2018 to 2019”

Twelve paintings composed in acrylics and mixed media on the theme of fragility and transformation
Subud House, 775 rue de Bordeaux, Montreal, Que.

Poetics Retreat, Cumberland, BC
2018 Sept 6 - 9

“Deep in Cascadia”

Three paintings featured at Abbey Studio Centre, Cumberland B.C.

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Messe Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany
2018 July 28 - Aug 10

“Unity in Diversity” 

Three of my paintings were exhibited at this group show.
“Emerging” shown here now lives in Colombia with an artist.

Mission Point House, Davis Bay, BC
2017 Nov 30 - dec 2

”calling the light”

ARTIST’S STATEMENT: It is a time of year when we are preoccupied with darkness and light. Seasonal ceremonies have been in place since the dawn of civilization to call back the sun, to banish any fearsome connotations of darkness and to bring cheer and hope. This time of year, close to the Solstice, is commemorated by followers of Western religions like Christianity and Judaism, as well as pagan traditions. It is when we call on the light within.
Of course, the light is always there. But during the dark time of the year we often fear that we will be left without vision or direction; our faith in the light can flicker.
It is with these concerns in mind that I have created an exhibition of abstract paintings with icon-like characteristics. I intend for them to hold a space, to “call” to the light, inner and outer, timeless and enduring. I intend for these paintings to say “come”, “stay”, “this is a good place”. I intend for them to be a meeting place for the light and for our sympathetic attention.
I use deliberate asymmetries to create a space, a dynamic stillness, into which we can coax the light or put us in a place where both we and the light co-exist. The paintings are composed in acrylics, oil, oil stick, pen on canvas.

Gumboot Cafe, ROBERTS CREEK, BC
2017 SEPT 1 – 30

“NOT THIS, NOT THAT”

ARTIST’S STATEMENT: This painting series derives from two ideas. First of all, the Vedic tradition of “neti neti”, not this, not that, signifying that ultimate reality is beyond words.
The tradition also shows a way of discriminating specific differences on the road to truth, and it points to a kind of conversation one can have about things and qualities, by articulating first of all what the ideal is Not.
Secondly, from the Central European, particularly Slavic folk tradition, of expressing a response to something by saying “No, No, not this, feh!, Not that either, feh!” Understood in this process is that nothing one could choose would be correct.
The sublime and the profane: only ever a hair’s breadth apart.
Looking at the obvious statement each painting presents in its title is intended to evoke speculations and specific questions. At the same time the inspiration for the work came from the simplest activities: looking at toys or walking by junk.
Accomplished in acrylics, oil stick, pen on canvas, ranging from abstraction to realism.
Exhibition of 12 Paintings in acrylics, oil stick, pen on canvas, ranging from abstraction to realism.

Foyer Gallery, SQUAMISH, BC
2017 JAN 3 – FEB 6

“A Crack in Everything God has Made”

Artist’s Statement: My interest in Taoism led me to read that the ancients studied cracks in Nature as an entry into Spirit and as a way of divining the future. Reading the future is not so interesting to me, but I take their interest to mean the individual soul is connected to all things, and so one can move into the Heart of Nature or into the depth of oneself simply by studying cracks in bark, leaves, stone, and so forth. Next to that interest, I am familiar with the notions in Kabbalah about ideas of redemption. That is, rather than just accepting everything fatalistically, the Kabbalists believed that by doing everything carefully, devotedly, and attentively, they were helping to redeem matter and return it to the Light, from which it was separated at the time of the Big Bang. I am very far from that ability, but it doesn’t hurt to begin. And the idea is inspiring. So art can become a way of reminding us to be attentive, to look, and to start working.
Exhibition of 15 paintings.

Green Chair Gallery, Canterbury, UK
2016 April 4 – May 13 Green

“THIRTEEN Ways of Looking at the Lure of the Sea”

Is this an exhibition about “looking at the lure of the sea”? Certainly. But in many ways it is much more about how carefully we actually look at the world around us.

Havana Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC
2015 NOV 26 — DEC 9

“THIRTEEN Ways of Looking at a Seascape
with a Crow”

These paintings come from an interest in the different ways we look at the sea. So as much as the work is about the aspects of the sea in different seasons, it is also about different ways of looking. What we call seascape usually presents some form of nostalgia or reverence. I try to avoid those scenes.
We shape the experience of the sea to fit our different moods—loneliness, sociability, anger, longing, sensuous pleasure, peace—and we use this shaping in our paintings, books, movies, even our ordinary daily lives.
It has probably always been this way. The Northern (Germanic and Nordic) Romantic landscape tradition, evident in the work of painters like Caspar Friedrich, emphasized the representation of extreme dark emotional states in the choice of certain kinds of seascapes and mountainscapes. I play with this tradition a little, and also reference a famous poem by the American poet Wallace Stevens “Thirteen Ways of looking at a Blackbird.” Neither reference is essential to appreciating the paintings, which have been composed using acrylics, inks, oils, oil stick, photo fragments, and pen, but I do fit a crow image into each painting.

Green Chair Gallery, Canterbury, UK
2016 April 4 – May 13 Green

“TOMORROW I SHALL BE ANOTHER”

Yesterday with all my friends I hid laughing in the rubble
And listened to the birds calling above the sirens
We pretended we could fly, that our bodies were filled with super
powers, that others listened to us with kindness, that our touch healed
wounds, that we exchanged gifts with strangers.
Yesterday we heard stories of heroes who went far away.
Yesterday we worked many hours and afterwards with faces pressed to
the fence watched rich people do nothing.
Today we huddle in the fields
Unable to make a loaf of bread feed hundreds
Today our dreams no longer rise above the smoke.
Today I know that even rich people may still want your crumbs,
But can they give voice to all those who have too little?
Food is food, water is water, nothing is nothing.
The rich think power will fill the void in their hearts.
We should not scorn those unable to turn shit into stars.
We can split an atom, but we cannot create a planet
where those unlike us are allowed to live.
What are you staring at?
Your wish has a multitude of exceptions waiting to crush it; every need
calls bureaucrats paid to argue its impossibility.
Our science cannot resolve your simplest loss.
Why do you wonder that so many embrace stories of the living dead?
Why are you amazed when they rush to join gangs wanting to cut off
people’s heads? They cannot cut off their own heads or stop
the thoughts that slowly suffocate them.
Tomorrow I shall be another.