Artist's Statement

There once was a time when I was able to carry all my worldly possessions – including a pair of brass candlesticks, one purple curtain, a Chinese figurine and a small cast-iron teapot – in a zippered duffel bag. With these props, and a few modest house-plants, I could fashion a colourful, welcoming nook for myself in the dreariest of roomiing houses. Through the years, my prop collection has expanded to such an extent that it would now rquire a moving van for transport.

With my paints, however, I can call up the rooms I created in the “real” world or make new ones on a page. But while some of the paintings in this series recount memories of particular corners in actual locations (Vancouver, Sainte-Claire, Moncton, Pokemouche), and others depict imagined nooks, all describe finding one’s niche, creating one’s home. They are about the simple pleasure of being alive in a world of one’s own making. They describe moments of peaceful awareness wherein a room can vibrate with colour, pattern and texture, and plants pulsate with life.

Although I began painting this series as interior scenes I gradually moved further afield. Curtains progressed (or digressed) from obscuring the outside view to delicately revealing the exterior world and finally disappeared altogether, along with the walls. The welcoming corners extended to the great outdoors.

I have wondered what this change of focus might signify. Perhaps that it is time to call for a moving van? Or maybe that the best means of transport is furnished by the mind itself.



May 1990