| Artist Statement The look of my latest work is highly influenced by the combination of Pop Art, still life and portraiture. The love of paint, combined with the Pop aspects of simple images, powerful colours and repetitive text and objects, gives my work a fresh, bold, fun and dramatic feel. I'm drawn to images in series as a way to explore the interconnectedness of all the parts of a given process. Whether the consumption of a pear, the examination of the contained human form, or the Pop portrait of an oil pump, the series work allows me to trace a path of exploration more thoroughly than a single painting, and depict the repetitiveness of consumer culture in the process. The imagery of much of the work has a lot to do with change, transitions and processes, those both deeply meaningful as well as mundane. With my latest paintings, I'm beginning to focus on environmental issues and in particular the topic of climate change. After seeing Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", I realized I could, and should, make a statement, and hopefully even a difference in the way people respond to these issues. By approaching them in a fun Pop Art Style I can get my point across without preaching or being too instructive. I want the work to engage the viewer with bright, bold colours, compositions, textual backgrounds and visual accessibility. The format of having a series of two to six paintings gives my work distinctiveness, and offers viewers more to look at and contemplate. I also feel that the message within my latest work is one we all need to address and the paintings can at least be a starting point for people to engage in further discussions about humanity, climate and the future of the planet. |