Shorelines

In this series of paintings, based on photographs taken while paddling along the mirrored shorelines of various lakes and rivers, I create bisymmetrical compositions that resonate with structures and openings in our own bodies, and that of other creatures real or imagined. This series continues my ongoing exploration of an embodied and sensual connection with the natural world connected to concepts of queer ecology. Along with personal iconography, painting passages allude to modernist and post-modernist painting movements, informed by close study of historical painters and artists gleaned from my years of work at public art galleries and research.

A layer of cold wax and oil paint is applied to an underpainting. Shapes and lines are scrapped away to reveal the colours underneath, then layered with hand-cut stenciled shapes in resonant colours. Colour theory and colour relationships are paramount to this work, the vibrations of simultaneous contrast and intensities of contrast creating optical shifts that add to the idea of opening one up to imagination and other ways of seeing and knowing.