I am a Canadian artist living just outside of Toronto. I received my BFA in printmaking from OCAD University in 2009, and since then I have developed a large body of work, mainly oil paintings. My work explores the subconscious and focuses on ideas of freedom, perceived beauty, identity and home. I am always challenging myself and exploring new ideas and techniques. While a very distinct undercurrent still runs throughout my different series’, I do not restrict myself to a visual niche, and I am always working on new and different projects. Below is a selection of works done in the past year including works from ‘Gathering of the Psyche’, ‘Toxic Love’, and ‘Chromatic Atrophy’.
'GATHERING OF THE PSYCHE'
In my most recent series I explore ideas that are more existential and spiritual in nature, focusing on soul. The white on white technique illustrates this concept and helps to visualize something entirely intangible. The translucence, and use of negative space along with a subtle use of color is reminiscent of a memory. I am attempting to capture the essence of a feeling or a thought, where images are floating and blending with the background. The subjects merge with each other and the loose and painterly background peeks through letting the white space become the focus. I was inspired by the Celtic rune stone ‘Oden’, - the blank stone -which stands for rebirth, limitless possibilities, and simultaneously embodies nothingness and death. The Idea that everything is the blank stone – limitless, full of potential, and also empty and meaningless – coincided with the existential ideas that everything is connected, everything is the same. It was this that I was drawn to; the idea of life, interconnectivity, and soul. My aim here was to create a collection, to gather pieces of this random nonsensical world, along with items of great meaning, and curate them together into a collection of paintings. I have attempted to visually harness the idea of a collective psyche.
PROPOSAL
Year in Review competition, provides a unique opportunity, without financial pressure, to explore and work on a larger scale, to create an installation of work that would potentially allow a full world to unravel outside of the two dimensions of a canvas and take over a space. I would like to use my current series of 'Gathering of the Psyche' as a starting point for my exploration, using lights, found objects painted white, bits of mirrors, frosted glass and fabrics to bring together a collection, a manifestation of the concept of the series. Creating a sculptural installation piece to complement the paintings, and emphasize the idea of everything being one: a culmination of a psyche, or a collective subconscious. The items I chose will be meaningful and meaningless, like a childhood toy, or an ink cartridge from a computer – in the end they will all come together and form an unlikely beautiful mess, much like ourselves and the world in which we live.
'TOXIC LOVE'
In this series of paintings, I am exploring the toxic qualities of beauty in relation to ideals of femininity. Juxtaposing toxic flowers intertwined with women I am exploring the destructive nature of vanity and outward appearances. The flowers are common symbols of feminine fragility. The 'poisoned' or 'dead' arms, bring a more serious undertone to the paintings coupled with the distant and confrontational gaze of the women addressing the viewer.
'CHROMATIC ATROPHY'
This series of paintings explores color and texture as a means to capture an emotional response, and the deterioration or disintegration of images into an abyss of the minds imagination. Working in layers and experimenting with free and spontaneous brushstrokes these emotion filled paintings are a giant visual leap from past works.
