Spirit Garden Series (1993)
Exhibited at Thielsen Galleries, November 12 - November 30, 1991click thumbnails below to view larger image
PressArticle in The Observer
Artist's StatementMy paintings reflect for the most part, the natural objects that provide me joy and wonder on daily walks through the woods at Canatara Park and the environs of Lake Chipican in Sarnia, Ontario. Throughout the years and as each season unfolds, then fades, they remain changeless, yet changing. The transparent greens of early spring enrich to deeper shades, then as if to leave in one last burst of glory, colour, then fall, forming endless patterns on the land. The emergence of wildflowers brings forth successive waves of newer colour until autumn's last days. Then winter's snow covers the bare bones of the landscape, accentuating the wonderful rhythmic undulations of the land. Always the light of new days and seasons creates the aura.
Canatara does not lend itself to panoramic scenery, but to quiet contained studies. This area is a sustaining constant in my life and I celebrate the light, form and colour of its changing days and seasons, sometimes muted, sometimes vivid, and above all the rhythmic patterns formed by living things as they move in their natural surroundings with grace and incredible beauty.
The more recent "Spirit Garden" series of paintings reflects my fascination with rhythm, pattern and colour in nature, but hidden subtly among the flowers and foliage is an imagined world of "spirits" of the "fairies" we knew as children...or is it really only imagined?