To me and many others the environment is precious and we must strive to protect it. Developing and extracting non-renewable resources is threatening our world. Our forests, oceans and air need a voice and as Franco Viteri, the Sarayaku leader in Ecuador, has stated;

 

                                                      “The forest is already ‘developed’, the forest is life”

 

   In my artwork I am trying to bring forth this idea that we do not own nature, we share it and should honour it.

I have been using found or cast away wood as the surface to my paintings. Barn wood planks, driftwood,  live edge boards, leftover trimmings, piled up in fields, tossed off in dumpsters at sawmills or fallen from dilapidated barns, these wooden surfaces show their worn, battered souls that would normally continue to rot and decay or be destroyed.

   I salvage these pieces and try to give them a rebirth by enhancing the organic qualities I feel are present in the inherent forms, colours, and textures. The colours and forms I use are dictated by the piece of wood; the grain, the knots, the bark, its original shape and it’s raw, original colours.

   The carved areas are made to accentuate the grain of the wood and reveal its inner patterns. The idea of carving into the wood is so that I can release and reveal the interior of the material, in a sense, exposing the wood's soul.  I feel this communicates a spiritual revelation and varnishing these areas with high gloss accentuates the connection to a glass quality; that is associated with the spiritual effect of a stained glass church window. I hope the juxtaposition of the decayed or untouched surface, with the varnished painted colours can enhance the beauty of the found piece and emphasize the transformation of the evolutionary process.

   I also feel that there is a distinctive Canadian quality in my work. Although this has not been intentional, the hieroglyphic designs, woodgrain-like shapes and earth colours give the pieces an organic quality that is often associated with forms found in our hinterland.

   It is this beautiful, pure, raw untouched nature that fascinates me and inspires my work.

 

   I quote a line from Naomi Kleins book "No Is Not Enough", (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2017):

 

                    "So many of the crises we are facing today are symptoms of the same underlying sickness:

                      a dominance-based logic that treats so many people, and the earth itself, as disposable.”

 

   Since we must recognize that we are in control of what we do as consumers we must also recognize our actions will affect our environment. We must look to a new way of treating each other and the earth we live on. The bitter truth is that those human actions which violate the laws of nature, the harmony of the biosphere, threaten to bring disaster to our existence.

 

How apt then are the words of ancient Oriental wisdom:

 

                                “Live closer to nature, my friends, and its eternal laws will protect you!”