Parallel Lines - photo-based encaustic paintings
(self-portrait happenings with a prison bed in Toronto),
with an interactive sculpture installation entitled
15 Minutes of Fame featuring the bed and suitcase depicted in the paintings.
Artist's Statement:
Years ago I met a young aboriginal man who within sixteen years had been through fourteen 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, are mounted on birch panels forming a base upon which I apply layers of encaustic (wax) paint to create imagined possibilities blurring the boundary between painting and photography. The original photo captures only a partial version of reality - aspects of the location, mood and lighting. I delve into the image to exploit the tangible but not captured on film, the invisible possible inner life beyond the borders. I fuse the lines between reality and imagination, the actual and the possible, real and remembered, the inner and outer worlds. The result is a series of evocative and deliberately ambiguous photo-based encaustic paintings exploring choice as a determining element in our lives.
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.
