works on paper at winchester

My watercolours don’t get out much. They mostly hang around the studio while I work on larger paintings...but Winchester Galleries is featuring my work on paper during their Canadian Modern show November 3 - 18th at their Oak Bay location.

These paintings play an important roll in my daily studio practice, much of it on a subconscious level. They are a direct yet meditative way to play out on paper new ideas and directions I’m considering. Each watercolour represents moments and experiences of the day and also reflect this dramatic West Coast I’m passionate about.

I work with a wash of gouache or watercolour along with back and forth drawing or scratching with other materials like ink and wax. On occasion a collage piece finds it’s way onto a painting. Watercolour is unforgiving, once you lay pigment down, you have to leave it and continue on. The act of drawing with watercolour is similar to working with graphite; the connection between thought and line is immediate. There is an intimacy of creating that gets captured in the work.
People observe they have a familiar, visceral response to this kind of mark making. It’s a pleasure to discuss the paintings with someone who may continue on with their own story-telling while they are drawn into the experience of the work.

Although Philip Guston was referring below to his painting style, this also happens when I ‘draw’ with watercolours and ink.
"I work to eliminate the time or the distance between my thinking and doing.”             Philip Guston

After years of visiting Winchester to see the work of many admired artists, I’m more than pleased to have my work hang on their walls.  
 'I Don't Know Your Song' and 'Hide and Seek' shown here, are among my other works on paper available at  Winchester Galleries in Victoria.