Cloud #39
Cloud #39 16″ x 20″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
I’m starting to feel a bit like a cloud-painting machine. This could be good or bad.
Cloud #36
Cloud #36 16″ x 20″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
Cloud #38
Cloud #38 16″ x 20″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
It is sticky and icky outside: the humidity makes for a challenging work week, I must say. To help beat the heat, I took a magical day off yesterday for the first time in a while, and had one of those beautiful evenings with a friend, a bottle of juicy merlot and some seriously stimulating conversation.
This cloud marks a subtle shift, a direction more oriented toward nebula as the series progresses. I am quite excited by the new possibilities they present…and does anyone know the plural form of nebula? I am very tempted to stick an “i” on the end like octopi and cacti…
Cloud #37
Cloud #37 16″ x 20″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
It is, as they say, crunch time. I haven’t worked this hard since I was ten and my father made me drag logs through the woods in exchange for a barbecued hot dog.
Cloud #35
Cloud #35 16″ x 16″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
I haven’t been posting these in sequence, but can’t wait to show an image of them all lined up. The transition from one cloud to the next is more evident when they’re photographed together, and will be a key component of this show.
Cloud #33
Cloud #33 16″ x 12″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
Three weeks ago my upper eyelid started twitching. Like a little mouse heartbeat, it pumped and fluttered on its own accord until I was forced to take time off, flee to Quebec, and spend a week with my toes dangling off the dock at a solar powered cottage in the middle of nowhere. I’m back in the studio now, and the twitch is at the bottom of a lake somewhere near Mont Tremblant.
Maybe I was afflicted because I’ve been hoarding some very exciting news. Three pieces of exciting news, actually! One is a solo show at the ASRG during Art Nocturne in Halifax this October. The second is that I’ll be living in New York City for four months this September, doing an exchange semester at Cooper Union. To top it all off, the third piece of news (that still hasn’t sunk in) is a solo show at a beautiful little gallery in NYC, Bodell Fahey Umbrella Arts. It probably doesn’t translate in writing, but I’m so excited I could rocket launch off a chair right now.
Cloud #34
Cloud #34 16″x 16″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
I skipped a cloud: I’d planned on posting these sequentially, but sometimes they need some extra TLC before they’re ready to show themselves. Cloud #34 has a peculiar sense of space. It has interesting boundaries and edges, some that flow into one another, making it difficult to tell what recedes and what comes forward. And, I’ve finally been able to let go of the ground and get rid of the landscape format that anchored all the paintings from last year. It’s liberating: the compositions have become much more free and have opportunities for invention and areas of abstraction that have reinvigorated my love of clouds. More to come…
Cloud #32
Cloud #32 16″ x 12″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010
It’s been difficult to photograph these works. It seems no matter how great the camera I buy, I still have to take about 300 pictures of each painting and tweak it in photoshop before it even comes close to resembling the original. Sigh. Nova Scotia is positively dreary right now: cold, wet, and slimy, with lots of slugs on the sidewalks squished by bicycles, and big worms who will probably suffer the same fate. I’m always overcome by an urge to rescue those stupid worms. Why do they go on the sidewalks? Those fools!
Last year, I think in July, it rained in Halifax and was cloudy every day for almost 5 weeks. A permanent fog settled over the city, it was freezing, and the longer it stayed, the more people looked up at the sky wondering when it was going to lift. It more or less ruined summer for a lot of people, and to make up for it, we had a disgusting heat wave in August that left everyone incapacitated. Let’s hope we don’t get a repeat.
Cloud #31
Cloud #31 16″ x 12″ Oil on Beechwood, 2010 
It’s been a while since my last post because I’ve been working like mad since school ended. I have two shows to prepare for this summer, I will write more about those later, and for now I’ll say I’m super excited about both of them…more to come soon!
Mother
Mother 5′ x 4′ Oil on Wood, 2010
SOLD
Son & Father
Son & Father 5′ x 4′ Oil on Wood, 2010 SOLD
I don’t think it needs explaining, but this one carries a lot of heavy duty baggage around guilt, shame, disappointment and change.
Mother & Child
Mother & Child 5′ x 4′ Oil on Wood, 2010
Originally a piece about grief, this work evolved into something more about inheritance and character and the traits passed down from one person to the next. 
Bedtime
Bedtime 24″ x 30″ Oil on Wood, 2010 SOLD
My sister and I shared a room growing up. Despite sometimes being a difficult arrangement, as sisters do fight (and we fought plenty), we shared everything, including distress brought upon us by my father. She endured more of his wrath than I had to, but the experience was communal nonetheless; this painting is not about our specific experience, but has more to do with individual afflictions that resonate with the other members of a family.
Dinner
Dinner 36″ x 48″ Oil on Wood, 2010
I moved toward figurative painting last semester, a decision that proved to be a difficult venture. The series concerns my family, and the actions of and reactions to alchoholism, its after effects, and the experience as felt by the family as a unit. The narrative involves my family specifically, but I was reaching for themes that would resonate (hopefully) on a more human or universal level. I was curious to hear from people how the individual works held up on their own, or if their strength resided in being seen as a series. It was also tricky territory to navigate: in painting people I know, personal attachment inevitably comes in to play. I have to question whether their emotional potency is due in part to my knowing them, or if it translates to the viewer, despite the fact that, to you, they are strangers. I’m posting work by the order in which they were made, some are better than others and others are still unfinished…
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