Burton, BC

I did this small, watercolour painting in1995.

Burton Narrows on Upper Arrow Lake, BC is a hauntingly beautiful spot to camp. In the sixties, the provincial government flooded the valley, and the Village of Burton with it.

Watercolour

Apart from drawing, watercolour sketching has been the dominant mode of 'expression' throughout my artistic career.

Here we have a favourite sketchbook page from about 1997, (depicting a remembered landscape from 10 years earlier).

Artist's Statement

(Click photo to enlarge.)


I am an artist and art teacher with nearly 35 years experience.

I see my work as research. Though my paintings appear quite abstract, I seek a new, fresher approach to realism. "Barrier," the painting in the header for this blog, was done using a roller on newsprint. The brown squares are moldy bread.

I made the 'background' impression by putting the paper over a wrought iron grate and rolling as if I was doing a 'rubbing.' The result is a loose pattern, which while being quite unlike the grate in character, has an important relationship with the subject. The fact that it borrows elementary characteristics (dimensions, parallel lines, diagonals) and was actually in contact with the subject for a time, brings very interesting considerations of what's "Real" and what's "Realism."

The large canvases in the mono-print series retained specific 'topographic' features. Replicas.

Anyway, 'abstract' can also mean to summarize or distill, and I like to distill characteristics of "ordinary reality" and present them in a new context. If the viewer gets an impression that's "oddly familiar," I consider the painting a success.

Some of these samples of my work are in public and private collections. Some are for sale.