Being surrounded by the beauty of the boreal forest and the Churchill River in my youth initially inspired me to become an artist. The animals that were prevalent and often visited my community, such as wolves, ravens and bears were the impetus for a year-long series of 52 small paintings. This was followed by another year-long project that consisted of wildflowers and their medicinal properties. Recently I made a decision to enlarge some of those previous works while pushing myself further in the exploration of colour and mark-making.
Now that I live in a rapidly growing area I have seen a number of wild animals in our city, a coyote in my alley and a porcupine in my lilacs, and wanted to incorporate an urban quality in the paintings through the use of hand cut stencils and hand carved stamps. Both past and present are reflected in this collection of paintings, inspiration that came from my childhood north of ’56 and the qualities of urban art to reflect the place I reside today. My goal is to continue to study the beauty of nature and culture to honour the place I came from while integrating the freedom of graffiti inspired methods of layering bold colour and pattern.