Parallel Lines - a currently ongoing series of photo-based encaustic paintings exploring choice as a defining moment in our lives.
Artist's Statement:
Years ago I met a young man who within 16 years had been through 14 foster homes, always moving, never settling. "One day," he told me, "I was so depressed, I threw a shovel through a jeweller's window: I knew at least I'd be wanted in jail."
With this catalyst re-sounding in my mind, I took a prison bed around the city of Toronto and engaged photographer John Davidson to document a series of my live solo performance ‘happenings’ through digital photography.
The photos, printed on archival paper and mounted on large birch panels, become a base upon and beyond which I apply layers of encaustic (wax) paint to create imagined possibilities.
In fusing and blurring the lines between painting and photography I explore the lines between the actual and the possible, the inner and the outer worlds.
Parallel Lines is the third project in a series of works featuring prison beds reclaimed from the former Kingston Penitentiary for Women and previously slept upon by an array of disturbed and occasionally notorious women. This rather unique opportunity arose through an art commission in which I was invited to create artworks utilizing waste from government buildings. Correctional Services Canada asked what I could do with discarded prison beds. I was intrigued with the challenge.
This is a big project. I shall be working on this for some time.
