An Exploration in Diversity

My artistic journey began in my youth. Primarily self-taught, I refined my techniques through a variety of mediums. Ceramics was the first medium that I used extensively. I then explored drawing, sculpture and photography, concentrating on the human figure.

In pursuit of a formal art education I went on to Concordia University in Montreal and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1987 with my major focus on print making and drawing.

Upon returning to Calgary I began to experiment with painting. The diversity of my subject matter and flexibility to experiment have become my style. I work with oils, encaustic and multi-media on paper, canvas, board and fabric.

My body of work is diverse, including paintings such as a huge canvas of an Italian landscape in a restaurant, a portrait of a smiling neighbourhood child, a still life of an unmade bed, or a life-size medieval queen in two-dimensional regalia.

As an artist, I try to evoke a mood, concentrating more on the color, texture and composition of the subject matter. I feel that the purpose of my paintings is not to represent reality, but to take it somewhere else.

I start my work manipulating photographs and transferring these into a painted medium or lighting and accessories. Through exploration of patterns between light and dark and the use of the temperature of color, I reproduce these images in my designs.