About 6-7 years ago I started thinking- what John Prine would paint? Prine, an important musical figure in our household is known for his body of subtle and profound songs rooted in everyday life. This exhibition features two bodies of works influenced by Prine- Dashcam and Neighbours.
Dashcam is a series of landscape paintings featuring roads. The view through the car windshield seems like a ready-made Prine song. Roads speak to freedom and possibility; the unknown; and the passage of time. Routes have been incised into the landscape by imperialists and dreamers. They take you home and allow you to escape your everyday.
You can view a 3D tour of the show at: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=RFm14Z1C6WN
Landscape painting in Canada has frequently been dominated by work less rooted in human geography; exploring the wilderness and generally downplaying the human reconstruction of the western prairies. John Prine was whispering in my ear as I started the dashcam series, placing the roadway firmly in the center of these artworks. Casting the viewer as the main character in a journey through the landscape altered by but not contained by human intervention. The works vary in size, exploring how shifting scale contributes to the visual impact. All the works feature acrylic paint layered on panel.
The series uses multiple layers of paint, often combined with carving and sanding, reworking the surface, literally reconstructing the landscape. I hope that this process of building up the surface of the artwork translates into how people experience the paintings, as the layers and shifts in the surface texture slowly are revealed over a longer period of contemplation. As the work progressed, I started to remove certain elements concentrating on placing the carefully delineated structure of the roads and signage in contrast with the loose dense painting of the landscape. Emulating some of the inherent contradictions in human interaction with our environment.
I strive for these works to be emotive paintings, rooted in physical journey but trying to build on the poetic nature of simple life experience. Geography as metaphor, with the acknowledged influence of the many writers, musicians and artists who have explored the rich terrain of our passage through the landscape.
And then in the spring of 2020 journeys suddenly became infrequent, as we all grappled with the necessary changes created by the COVID 19 pandemic. As the weeks of reduced city traffic continued, I started to observe changes in my environment. Local wildlife started to openly dominate my surroundings, brazenly travelling the local roadways and freely carousing throughout the neighbourhood. I started to ponder the importance of animals as portents in classic stories, religion and literature. The result is a body of work entitled Neighbours.
This is a series of block-prints that feature the animal visitors that I observed from my studio. It is a playful attempt to cast the animals in the role of portents, the imagery is simple and generally open ended. The work was created in the context of our current situation of a world-wide pandemic and on-going environmental crisis. I believe that the animals provide a moment of hope and perhaps wisdom in their ready adaptation and celebration of freedom in the midst of human crisis. Their behavior, perhaps, showing us all a pathway forward.