Square Dance Too #3 Painting

BIO I was born in the city of St. John’s on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. I grew up on the shores of a lake and learned to swim at a very young age. All of my fondest memories always include water. If I have a first love it is mathematics. My fascination with numbers and calculation led me into the engineering program at Memorial University in Newfoundland. After two years of studying engineering, I left to attend the Alberta University of the Arts where I studied Visual Communications. After graduating, I got a job in advertising and went on to earn my living in corporate graphic design, including developing corporate identities for some of the largest corporations in Canada. Painting is the current love of my creative life. My work has been accepted into a number of national and international juried shows and won many awards including Third Prize Winner for “International Artist” Magazine, People & Figures. My work has been featured in several publications and I have pieces in private and public collections across the United States, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Paraguay. Artist Statement I've dealt with a great deal of adversity over the years and even now, at times I feel as though I exist in a strange state somewhere between life and death. For me, everything changed in an instant, yet my life continues. Today, I find myself living an entirely new existence in what seems like in an entirely new universe. Encouraged to paint by a dear friend and mentor who has always admired my creative abilities, this new reality has become the backdrop for my art. My first painting, called “Soaring”, is a close-up of a figure swimming in water with her back to the viewer, taken entirely out of context, and painted in such a way that we really don't know where she's going or how she's getting there. She could be flying; she could be dying. And this is what my art as well as my existence is about–whether to fly or die. I choose to fly. My portrait sketches represent my lighter, humorous, more whimsical and spontaneous side. I create them mainly at night after a long day of painting, having left the studio and relaxing around the house. They just make me laugh, and the reason for their being is no more complicated than that.