Artist’s Statement

I find I am drawn to subjects in which the quality of light creates a mood that is strongly evocative of time and place.

In capturing the visual impact of my subjects, I focus on two distinct yet complementary aspects of light:

the illumination of the atmosphere, which articulates depth, and the modelling of shapes, which reveals

texture and detail. Accordingly, a theme common among many of my paintings is the portrayal of atmospheric depth contrasted with the portrayal of textured surfaces, rendered in a style that, hopefully, recreates the sensations

I experienced upon first observing my subjects, with the intent of communicating and sharing those visual sensations

with viewers of my work.


Bio

As a native of Vancouver, I have lived in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia for most of my life. My life-long interest in painting stems from my childhood in the 1960s, when I was tutored in various artistic techniques by my parents, who were graduates of the Vancouver School of Art. As a result of my post-secondary training in the field of photo-journalism in the mid-1980s, I moved to Toronto, where I worked as the assistant editor of Photo Life magazine. While travelling to Toronto, I was struck by the vastness of the land, intrigued by the artistic possibilities of recording what I had seen. Subsequently, while at Photo Life, I soon gained an enhanced appreciation of the characteristics of light, and the aesthetics of lighting effects. Until that point, I had been painting intermittently throughout my life, but it was my daily exposure to photographic art – together with the inspiration provided me by my move to Eastern-Central Canada – that inspired me to devote more of my time to painting.  Following further travels throughout Canada, Europe and the Caribbean, in 1994 I returned to Vancouver, where I began to paint full-time, resulting in a series of exhibitions of my work and a continuation of my artistic training through courses offered by the Federation of Canadian Artists.