Niwa, 2024. Acrylic and acrylic gouache on canvas. 40 x 30 in.
Winter, 2024. Acrylic and acrylic gouache on canvas. 40 x 30 in.
Final Stretch, 2024. Acrylic and acrylic gouache on canvas. 30 x 24 in.
Point Grey, 2024. Acrylic and acrylic gouache on canvas. 48 x 24 in.
According to Wassily Kandinsky, “colour is the keyboard”; a means of exercising influence upon the soul. It is the artist’s hand through which the keys cause the human soul “to vibrate.”
To convene with nature’s sublime is to experience a kind of awe and reverence that transcends language and rational thought. Completed during study at the University of British Columbia's Point Grey campus, these paintings evoke the natural grandeur of the Pacific Northwest through gentle, lyrical colour intervals — sensuous bands of mostly Prussian Blue and Terra Verde, applied layer upon layer.
Amid towering cedars, the steely Pacific, sea fog, lush verdure, moss-laden gardens, vernal fragrances, and tranquil trills — raindrops falling on roofs, seagulls calling, waves crashing on shorelines — a feeling of expansiveness prevails, and despite the uncertainties and mundane urgencies of modern daily life, nature’s ancient verses do as well.
Some of these works were featured in Poetics of Place (2024), a catalogue of selected prints and paintings.