I feel quite interested in the idea of resurrection of materials, things that are considered detritus
to a lot of people who were discarding it.
I feel like there's definitely a lot more life still in it.
And by making it into art, I think that it can last a long time.
The more that this sense of salvage has come out in my work, the more I find myself looking
at the ground, looking at the fallen fences and garbage days, you know, seeing what's
on the curb, especially in the commercial areas.
I've always been interested in salvage and being responsible to the environment and to
my space.
So rescuing things out of the garbage or the side of the road or things that are just
about to be considered garbage that are breaking down and giving you life to things is just
a natural step after all those other things.
And just trying to rescue, rescue things that I can bring back or that are already there
that I'm just kind of putting up on a wall.
It's almost like some of the materials that would get the most abused or what are most
interesting to work with because they've developed so much character.
You know, a particular plank of wood, for example, gets buried or gets left behind in
the rain for a decade or something, it becomes very, very different in its pitting and its
scarring and its aging and its decay.
These are kinds of incidents that happen to us, too, I think, there's a common crown
or common thread there where we go through traumatic things that forever change us.
Wood and metal and materials, they scar like we do.
So there's always a story behind what happened to create that marking, to go from there and
try and create something completely different with it.
But that's something.
There's often things that are amongst the markings on the wood and the metal or whatever
material I find that I didn't put there that are already quite strong in their own sense
of having character value.
So those types of things I like to keep there, to honour that being part of the found object,
part of the salvage idea, and even going further to try and glorify it by composing
around it in certain ways that will help to bring it out more or push it back so it's
less anything like that that I think might heighten its sense of beauty that's already
there and kind of like point it out and frame it in a certain way that I'm glorifying that
that inner beauty that it already has.
It's kind of like a spark will come to me from the piece itself so it is as much a player
and plays as much of a role in the final product as I do.
I find myself drawn to the wood because it's the snowflake, it's the every piece is different
that the grain is never really repeating itself in a logical manner.
These textures run so deep when it's nurtured and you oil it and sand it down you can see
all kinds of beautiful colours.
It's nature's art, it's already abstract in so many ways that I'm just kind of playing
along a lot of the time since pretty powerful stuff.
I'm just trying to understand the wood, why is it shaped the way it is, where has it been,
why is this nail sticking out the way it is, where did it go to get this big rust mark?
Where has this particular piece been to look the way it is and there's all kinds of possibilities
and none of them are probably right.
But it's nice to negotiate the relationship and introduce yourself to it and have it speak
that way and some of my best pieces that I really, really love came from really feeling
in connection with that particular work being careful with my choices.
As of late I've been using more organic materials, even right down to the oils that I rub into
the wood, I use a lot of hemp oil.
It's fantastic for the wood, responds really well to it and it's fantastic for my hands.
I mean I used to use these crazy chemical based oils that you'd have to wear respirator
and gloves and rub it on and then switching to the hemp oil suddenly it's actually recommended
not to wear gloves and it allows me to be more hands on like I'm actually touching the
wood, feeling it and getting a sense of where it's smooth and where it's rough and what
part of it will take the paint more deeply and that helps the muse, it helps the muse
to come up with more ideas as well.
I think living in Toronto and living in an urban metropolis, you start to see how much
turnover there is with material, structures go up, structures come down and all that just
gets carted off somewhere and in most of the time we don't even think about that because
it gets taken away from our eyesight so we don't have to think about it but I see so
much of it that it's definitely affected the way I handle my materials quite deeply.
Try and make sure I use up everything that I have, all little cutoffs of wood get saved
and categorized in different types and sizes for future use and if I mix too much paint
for a certain application or project I tend to throw it onto another canvas or another
piece of wood or just start another piece, make sure that it's all being used up.
My drop sheets become works of their own after six to eight months of them just being on
the ground underneath other work.
Yeah, it's definitely affected the work now that it's been a year or two of that practice,
of making, of trying to be conscious of everything.
I can definitely see how it's starting to affect everything else and work has changed
because of that mentality.
The balance of nature versus development is so relevant in these neighborhoods and everything
that I'm working with that just made sense to combine these materials together and allow
it to raise questions to people about the balance of urban sprawl versus nature and
forests and things.
I think I'm just responding to my environment in a way that feels right and makes sense
and is easy for me.
Some people go into politics or can write books about it because that's their strength
and I'm a visual person so when I get stressed out about something or get excited about something
I'll go to work that way.
I prefer to react and respond and change and evolve and just try and gather as much of
this as I can and learn the materials and have relationships with these ideas and see
where it takes me because I'm not there yet.
Thank you.
