The paintings posted here are examples from my last two exhibitions, “Australia” and “Coastal Blues”.
In the Australia paintings, I attempt to capture a sense of the diversity of Australia, with its sometimes lush, sometimes harsh, but always compelling landscape. For five weeks in the fall of 2001, I traveled over 10,000 kilometers of Australia, including a 17-day camping trip through the Australian Outback. These travels, extending from Sydney, north to Darwin, south to Port Augusta, and east to the Great Barrier Reef, form the basis for this exhibition.
The process of landscape painting for the Australia exhibit took me to new places in my artistic journey. I developed a keen appreciation of painting nature and a need to express artistically my love and appreciation for the unequaled beauty of our British Columbia coast, resulting in the Coastal Blues paintings. Most of these images represent the Sunshine Coat area, however, they are representative of a much broader section of our coastal landscape.
Previous work includes “The Hundred Year Promise”, a 30 foot, ten panel mural. Done in 1986 as part of Vancouver’s Centennial celebration, it used wedding costume over 100 years as a metaphor representing the contradictions in the role of tradition in women’s lives. My next series titled “Widows’ Weeds” completed in 1996, was portraits addressing feminist issues arising out of research on ”The Hundred Year Promise”. Here I used the traditional dark and somber attire of the widow to suggest the disillusion of unmet expectations.
In 1998, I completed “Wrapped: Artists & Eccentrics”, a series of portraits which again used clothing as a metaphor for the devices artists and eccentrics use to protect their inner selves from an often critical and unforgiving public. “Iris and Others” an exhibition of floral paintings, was completed in 2000.
I have been an active member of the vital Commercial Drive Arts Community for the past 21 years, participating for five years in Avenue for the Arts (AVA), a Vancouver based community oriented arts organization. During this period, I especially enjoyed an opportunity to sit on an AVA Steering Committee during its two years as Resident Visual Art Company at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Since 2005, I have enjoyed having my studio on the popular Eastside Culture Crawl.
