Biography

Education
Bachelor of Arts, Drama - Bishop’s University, Lennoxville (Québec)
Banff School of Fine Arts - Banff (Alberta)

Solo Exhibitions
2009   GN Studio, Oakville
2008   To Go, Toronto
2004   To Go, Toronto

Group Exhibitions
2012  Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Juried Exhibition, Toronto
2009  Three Contemporary Artists, GN Studio, Oakville
2006   Engine Gallery, Toronto
2006 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, Juried Exhibition, Toronto

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I saw two or three paintings by Jackson Pollock. I think it was in Washington, DC; I don’t really remember the Where so much as the What. Were these actually paintings? Art? Whatever they were, they stuck with me.

Born and raised in Montreal, I moved to Toronto in 1985 and was a professional actor for over 20 years, working in both film and television and in theatres across Canada. I left the acting business in 2008.

I have been painting since 1989, when I started working with watercolours – always with at least some level of abstraction. The early paintings are landscape based for the most part. From the start, I have always painted works in series, exploring variations on discovered themes. Within a couple of years I began working with acrylics, and the brush was put aside in favour of scrapers of various sizes. I always find myself trying new things, never confining myself to a single approach. For 15 years I worked exclusively on paper (140lb cotton rag watercolour paper). The pure, untouched surface of the white paper is a powerful part of these paintings – I almost always leave a portion of the paper unmarked. The first paintings on canvas came in 2004, and I use canvas the same way, leaving some raw canvas visible (although, sometimes the only untouched portion of the canvas is its edges). Once a canvas is primed, it loses something of its original quality, it’s grain, its character. The brush has also made a return – I find myself moving from scrapers to brushes, and back again, depending on the series I’m currently working on. I start a series with an idea, yet the finished works rarely turn out as I had originally envisioned them. For me the process serves the artwork (I would not call myself a Conceptual artist).

Nothing can compare to the experience of viewing the works of the masters firsthand. That’s the true yard stick: will my work measure up next to these?