Artist Statement
The paintings are narratives and allegorical. I am telling stories. Images that often recall childhood memories, social observations or futuristic fragments are used to form a landscape in which a conversation can occur. The stories are often either utopian or dystopian tales that connect man with his environment. In my Utopian worlds man functions and lives in balance with his environment and his milieu. In my Dystopia paintings the environment has been violated and becomes difficult and inhospitable.
I think of my working process as a kind of extraction system that pulls concepts from the world of objects, ideas and observations and then folds them back into another reality. This alternate reality is the place where I can rethink and reformulate the world into another. It is this other world that becomes either a utopia or dystopia and also becomes the platform in which to discuss social and cultural issues. Many of my paintings are about the frozen moment of realization, the moment when the protagonist comes to terms with events unfolding; this is his moment of epiphany, his breath being held. It is a moment of questioning and contemplation.
Images are derived from my photographs and sketches of landscapes, urbanscapes, and industrial parks that surround Montreal. These images create a stage in which I explore how we live, work and respond to land, to structures and to our environment. By exploring different aspects of Utopia/Dystopia, I am exploring our present social and political situation.
