My show opening was last Thursday evening. Thankfully I was too busy meeting & greeting to answer questions regarding the paintings, having succumbed to blithering idiot-hood by that evening.

But the question of meaning & what drives the work came up so here I am blogging an answer to those I could not give one to.

A central theme of mine is communication, the nature of information (whatever it may be) exchange & the hierarchy of knowledge.
I look at how language (verbal & body) refers to one aspect of communication. Language often acting as a paradigm of our place in the world. As an extension to issues of language I use text; text as rhythm, as information & poetics. The rhythm of life; breathing, music, etc. And, text as a method of delivering meaning, thought, explicative.

A few years ago, someone mentioned to me that they had used a cottage on Lake Simcoe. I had never been there. I googled Lake Simcoe on a map of Ontario, only knowing that it was north of my adopted city of Toronto. Lake Simcoe became one more place I’d never been among thousands, and a metaphor for all I do not know in this age of information. It began to stand in as a list for life experiences; from adventures not had, people unmet,(on a street poster today I saw ‘love unspent’, which tickled my fancy) books unread, etc.

I reflected on how so many of us delve verbally, into areas which we do not know, have opinions about things we have not experienced, pronounce pronouncements! I began to think about a set of fictitious instructions to places I’ve never been, languages I do not speak (like reading bad translations of VCR instructions), & cultures I have little understanding of beyond difference.

Back to painting! The text is a freeing device, anchored in my having something to say. Colour and the application of paint is the poetry & passion of a piece. Colour and the action required in painting is sentiment, representing the journey, taking me as the painter somewhere I need to be, & potentially the viewer to a non-specific new place.  The colour & brushstroke are the ‘de-intellectualizing’. Colour, paint, brush marks, blur the map, obstruct the instructions & bring the self in through bodily action. Ultimately there is no ‘there’ to get to. Each painting is be here now.

Painting is a language. Art making is language making. Visual art is a method of speaking, declaring & communicating… and it can be ‘Greek to me’.