I recently spent a week in the woods on beautiful Galiano Island, BC, at Leña Artist Research and Residency Centre. It was a quiet, productive and restorative week. Many of the themes I have been thinking about in my work materialized in new ways. The amount of uninterrupted painting time, research, and introspection that occurs at an art residency cannot be replicated in one’s daily life. I find a week away at a residency to be equal to about two months or more of regular studio time.
I have been wrestling with two modes of thinking within my painting for sometime. One mode is focusing on pure abstraction and focuses on formal design elements such as color, repetition, line or shape. The second mode is being influenced by the colors of the landscape and painting in a more intuitive way. For the past few months in the studio I have been floating between these methods, and never really quite knowing how they will come together or if that is even of importance. I seem to alternate by doing a painting one way and then the following painting will respond in the other way.
The paintings I did on Galiano seemed to bring these two thoughts closer together. Perhaps the idea of place expressed through color is really just a whisper within the painting, and the focus right now is on exploring formal elements in new ways. I brought in some new colors, shapes and used new techniques, and in combination the results are very exciting. I have a lot to investigate in the studio this spring to build upon the ideas sparked at Leña.
Check out my “Painting” page for more images of my current body of work and fill out my contact form for sales inquires.
“2022.05” 6”x36”x2” acrylic on mounted panel © 2022 - available and ready to ship within Canada
