My work in oil painting focuses on an abstract or landscape based ground on which a figurative image, such as an animal or a motif is painted or stencilled. The interaction between solitary, vanquished animals and industrial structures has narrative import. In a poetic and painterly way, the images are meant to suggest that the effect of human activity, as symbolized by industrial structures, leads to the loss of habitat and species extinction.
I am concerned with the visceral, sensuous, and expressive potential of paint, for example, when a brush fully loaded with paint moves across the slightly pebbled surface of the canvas. Images are chosen for their ability to energize or interact with the ground; for their suggestive or evocative potential; and in the case of animals, for their presence — either a sense of imminent threat or fragility. I strive for a spontaneous and intuitive approach and for a dynamic interaction of figure and ground within a painterly surface.
I am a Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts at Mount Allison University where I taught painting, drawing, and seminar courses in contemporary art issues from 1980 to 2009. I received a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University in 1972.
My work has been exhibited regionally, for example, in the annual juried exhibition at the Moncton Art Gallery; in the group exhibition Portraits: New Brunswick Painters, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB, and Site/Specific/Sight, Marion McCain Atlantic Art Exhibition 2007, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB, and in a solo exhibition, A journey over the river Styx, Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, NB, 2006. Dark Forces at Mount Allison University, an essay on activist art has been published in Public Art in Canada: Critical Perspectives, edited by Annie Gerin and James S. McLean, University of Toronto Press, 2009.
May, 2018