Ingrained Patterns & Pathways is on show
at Salt Spring Arts from 9 June – 10 July
“That its barrenness becomes a thousand things”
Line from “The Rock” by Wallace Stevens
One poet that has influenced how I think about art is Wallace Stevens; two paintings in this series are inspired by his poems. My use of pattern is akin to Steven’s metaphor of the rock as the ground from which we build meaning in our lives.
These paintings started as a way to explore composition and to merge abstract constructs with elements of figuration. The overall pattern works as a ground on which I build the painting. It is also a foil against which I can push at the limits of the pattern to try to move beyond it and create new compositions.
An ongoing focus of my work has been to explore the relationship of the image as idea and the material presence of the painting as object. The contrast of solid and semi translucent shapes, the use of colour, the textural possibilities of the encaustic medium, the fragments of figurative elements all function like a language, directing an emotional response to the work that is suggestive of the feeling of place, of memory and narrative.
