Artist Statement | Behind the Heart

Whether it really exists or not, I have this romantic notion of the arts. For me, the way it lends itself when I need, offering salvation so I can be with myself fully, is where it’s real grace pulses. 

In this way, it has been a sort of place of healing, a place of undoing and reworking; an ever-changing horizon where the mind and heart, or, where the present and nostalgia, where the inner and outer, can find one another. And sometimes, that’s all it takes, finding one another.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to interact with the world, and myself, how I want my life to feel, and it falls somewhere along the lines of my own world within the world; a place of my own volition and creation, where I can be as much of a viewer as a creator. 

This ongoing internal monologue is where I integrate my soul into what is beyond my design. There needs to be a place for me, and it needs to be on my own terms.

Growing up, this wasn’t always the case. I found myself often guided by the decisions of others and structures designed by those before them. This chain of command, this system of control, does not lend itself to creation, let alone permit it. What it does do, though, is reveal a place to start questioning.

In my current world, things are beautiful, and the landscape is there with me. So long as I am reaching for it, it responds, always.

This place is ancient, and it doesn’t update like the mind. Its soil is a sounding-board for the sacred; a place where the residues of passed time reveal the gaps in our modern, colonial lives and guides us back to our roots – often in the form of a reflection of ourselves.

Of course, process is as important as the rest – the language that we speak is as important as what we aim to say – but there exists a third thing. Something beyond language that cannot be spoken but heard. For me, the artists way of living, and the landscape, is the place to start listening.

Artist Statement | Behind the Mind

Over the years, my practice has continually evolved as I explore new subject matter, often shifting with changes in medium and approach. At its core, though, I see my work within the tradition of landscape - not as a fixed category, but as an open space for exploration. For me, landscape is both the world around us and the terrain we carry within. It becomes an opportunity to reflect on how external places and internal states shape and mirror one another.

Building on this perspective has led me to focus on the threshold between representation and abstraction. Investigating this access point, my work has evolved and is now guided by a developing ‘Line Theory’, a practice of free-associative mark making that balances randomization with pattern. Utilizing this device, I seek to infuse the natural world around me with the unconscious nature within me. Beginning in the summer of 2022, I experimented with this approach, giving rise to an ongoing body of work now known as Line Landscapes.

Additionally, I have been experimenting with another visual device, that being, combining multiple perspectives to challenge fixed points of view and offer a richer, more complex experience in the making and viewing of my work.

Through line, colour, form, and spatial experimentation, I aim to create work that is both grounded in the familiar and open to fluid interpretation, inviting viewers to engage with perception, place, and the instability of witnessing.

Line Theory: Phenomena Within Free-Association

In separating the foundational elements of my Line Landscapes, a series of paintings formulated through an abstract approach to representation, my current practice concentrates on isolating line as a primary operative force, disentangling it from representation to foreground its autonomous logic.

By emphasizing this elemental structure, I interrogate how line functions when liberated from the constraints of conscious depiction. The resulting body of work proposes line as a visual language whose syntax is simultaneously rational and intuitive, and capable of producing meaning beyond aesthetics.

Positioned within my broader practice, these works establish a theoretical framework that invites reconsideration of how abstraction mediates perception and experience – and acts as a focused entry point into the larger visual systems of my practice.