This exhibit brings together work done over the past twenty years, expressing a vision that combines an architect's fascination with place and a painter's interest in colour and light. The paintings depict both "empty" landscapes and those inhabited by buildings or other human artifacts. I've included a few renderings of architectural designs to show how a lifelong fascination with landscape has translated for me, personally, into built form.
All my work - both my paintings and my architectural designs - is inspired by an underlying urge to situate myself, emotionally and spiritually, within the world.
Perhaps landscape, especially the vast open landscape of Canada, represents for all of us who dwell here both wonder and threat. The land is both inviting and dangerous - dazzling us with its endless variety and beauty on the one hand, and challenging us on the other to survive its harsher moods of cold and storm and isolation. Our impulse is both to explore the land, and to take shelter within it. My investigation of landscape painting, like my interest in building, is fuelled by two, perhaps paradoxical, urges: on the one hand I am drawn to "discover" nature - to probe its drama and diversity and power. On the other hand I am constantly seeking to make myself at home in the world, to find shelter within its vastness and complexity. Landscape painting allows me both to explore, and to "come home" to a sense of being rooted in a given time and place.
My constant sense of the fleeting nature of time has also shaped these paintings. Many started as sketches made during trips across Canada, rendered quickly in watercolour or oil. As I worked I felt the land stretching away from me in all directions towards infinity, and felt the present moment melting away with each tick of the clock. The ever-changing play of shadow and light, moving all the time, forced me, in turn, to stay loose and flowing, matching the speed of my brushstrokes to shifting moods of the landscapes before me.
Show Hours - Weekdays: 9 to 4, February 5th through March 3rd 2010
Artist's Reception: 1:30 to 3:30 Sunday, February 7th
