"Did she say landscape?"

This is an artist statement that I put together with a friend of mine....

Fluorescent, black, electricity.

These are not words typically used to evoke a natural landscape.

This body of work seeks to contrast two different themes: the natural and the artificial.

The opportunity to become intimate with the beauty of nature from a young age is something that has greatly influenced my artistic language. I have encountered the Canadian landscape from coast to coast, in all its diversity and richness.

People associate simple patterns and symbols with elements in nature, and rely on these patterns to understand art. I have enjoyed challenging and manipulating these assumptions, exploring how they interact to create an accessible or inaccessible landscape.

However, the natural landscape is no longer the only kind we encounter. The encroachment of industrial and urban elements upon it is a reality of the post-industrial world. These new landscapes are just as complex, challenging and beautiful, and bring new scope to the concept of landscape art.

Bringing together natural and artificial elements to subvert the landscape, I engage the audience’s assumptions about the Canadian landscape and finally invite them to reconsider our artistic Canadian Identity.

As I mentioned, my only desire is for it to give me some structure/ direction in an attempt to drive some themes that are important to me.

Thus! Feedback would be great. Any ideas of artists I should be thinking/ reading/ obsess about? Canadian Identity... don't go there??

Let me know.

Open for blogging!

Perhaps inspired by all the possibilities a new year presents my mind has been spinning with future painting ideas. My temptation is to get painting (which is my typical reaction) but this time around I'm trying something new. At the end of 2009 I began thinking about what I've accomplished and otherwise. I began to see that my work has been really lost for the last 4 years (by lost I mean alllllll over the place). I have not had any sort of direction, trying desperately to get it all together in time for graduation. That frantic way of working provided me with some interesting results but what I really desire now is a body of work that functions as a coherent discussion between each other. So in response to these reflections I've decided to work from an artist statement which is normally an after thought. I hope this gives me a good starting point and that direction I was talking about.

That's all for now as I continue to figure out this whole blogging thing.