About
I am a collector of images and a maker of things. I have a strong curiosity for any type of creative medium and often find myself pulling skills from one medium into another. I studied photography under the tutelage of my two uncles and later went on to briefly study fine arts. However, it was my time at Studio 58, the theatre training program at Langara College, that really opened up my creative world. Somehow, all my seemingly disparate training and the various workshops I had taken dovetailed, I had the ah ha moment of realizing that everything I had ever studied was of incredible value.
I have always been drawn to three dimensional surfaces and my training as a theatre set designer has a strong impact on my work. In many ways, the pieces where I cut into the surface or float elements onto the background, feel like set designs to me or, like pieces of architecture. Several years ago, I came across the works of Lucio Fontana, an Argentinian-Italian artist who cut into his canvases. Cutting into the canvas, while perhaps seeming sacrilegious to some, was to me a fascinating idea, this was also the moment when I began working with various metal leafs. It is beneath the cut where the treasure is to be found.
I have come to understand that I am not one thing, I have no single creative medium, I am a woman of many loves completely dedicated to creative process.
ABOUT THE ARTWORKS.
I take my inspiration from the world of symbols and myth, esoteric teachings, arcane knowledge and sacred geometry. My work seeks to pull the viewer into the symbolic nature of each piece where I use images from paintings and various art forms to expand upon their meaning. In a world that is inundated with imagery, we have lost touch with the symbolic. I am fascinated by a time when art, images and architecture held deep symbolic meaning and teachings, and in some way, fed the soul of the viewer. These images and structures still resonate within us. Our time is heavily weighted toward science and so-called facts, but there is a part of us that yearns for mystery, to be moved by some unknown force.
My work plays with the idea of the microcosm and the macrocosm. At times, seemingly disparate elements are placed into a single panel. I see underlying connections and meaning, believing, as I do, in the teachings of quantum physics which tells us that everything is connected.
With other pieces I seek to amplify an idea or a gesture and draw the viewer into the deeper meaning held within. While some images are religious in nature, I see them as transcending the boundaries and dogmas of religion and touching the spiritual self that resides within us.
In a way I am a time traveller, I use my art as a portal to various times and places, by immersing myself in an image, repeating it, amplifying it, I seek the experience of being in another time and seeing that image for the first time. Through my art I’m given a glance, an opportunity, an education, all of which is deeply meaningful and fascinating to me, and, I hope, to those who experience it.