Artist Statement

For the past three years, I have been working from subjects found in my immediate surroundings, the southern part of Manitoba's Interlake.

The landscape is dominated by the requirements of grain and cattle. The land here is quite flat and the first things that the eye notices are the straight lines and square angles of the roads, ditches and fencelines. Everywhere the natural form of the land has been dissected by the mathematical rhythm of section, township and range.

But, as you look longer, the land asserts itself; the natural contours overpower the artificial. Every straight line is corrupted by an undulation, every perpendicular is squeezed a little out of place. The whole aspect vibrates and shimmers with wind and sunlight.

I have wrestled with the landscape, trying to confine it to the flat white surface with color and line. It wriggles loose, uncontrollable. Pinned down too tightly, it disappears leaving an empty shell.

But if I hold it loosely, gently, the land reveals itself in the paper—light, shadow and wind.

September, 1988