I have had a love affair with the Laurentian mountain region for as long as I could remember. For over seventy years I have called this area ‘home’, even though Montreal has predominantly been my ‘home base’. Although the vibrancy of the city has permanently marked my heart with its charm, culture and energy, it is the recurring seasonal changes of the Laurentians that have become embedded in my personal sense of belonging and of identity.
My accumulated explorations and memories are the sparks of my creative output. I have experienced the Laurentians with all my senses and, too, over many seasons. My paintings are the outcome of this simmering and potent recipe for my creative expression.
Mother Nature shows herself with an abundance of details to an infinite degree. It is the artist’s prerogative to include as much or as little of those details in any composition. I choose to be highly selective, and in doing so, areas of form and colour are simplified in my paintings. Colour blocks, as opposed to linear markings, divide up the canvas space. My aim is not to mimic nature but to capture the essence of the day, and its organic beauty.
In my repertoire of work, patterns of nature are often repeated, scenes often revisited, yet I create a unique relationship with my immediate surroundings that are clearly reborn in each canvas. The attention I give to negative space on the canvas surface demonstrates that I am spacially an equal opportunity painter, by realizing how the definition of a specific area can shed importance on another. What keeps the viewer’s interest are my balanced compositions. Segments of colour, with both overlapping and adjacent hues that complement each other, please the eye. Or, perhaps it is merely my adoration of nature that comes through with a pure sense of clarity.
My interiors and still life compositions offer the viewer an intimate peek at what I find most pleasing from life’s precious segments. Painted less frequently than my landscapes, they nevertheless capture the same freshness as shown in my depiction of the outdoors. I capture form through my seemingly intuitive sense of colour. (In fact, I have spent a great deal of time reading about and thinking about colour theory and light.) The objects and spaces created on canvas are representations of what I have personally known. I cannot paint what I have not known, or do not know well.
My portraits expose character, without intent to create a perfect likeness of the model. Yet, each canvas portrays an image of a unique individual. For me, each one exposes the personal connection between the sitter and the artist. You will find a sweetness, a mystery, the depth of a pondering mind, or perhaps an adventurous spirit in the overall expression. Let your eye linger, and find that each canvas speaks its own language to the viewer.
Uncomplicated in subject, well-balanced, layered, light-filled, and painted with enthusiasm and passion, my compositions are created with both drive and joy. That, in addition to knowledge and skill, give the viewer a colour story to delight and to befriend the soul. I dare question whether it is a passion for nature, for the Laurentians, or for painting that calls to me. Then again, why must I choose between the three? They all are, in combination, the driving force behind my work.
