Water Totem 1 Painting

As a multi-media visual artist and arts educator, my work includes figurative and abstract compositions, textural paintings, collage, sculpture, photo-based and film projects. For the past two decades, I have focused on creating socially conscious and sustainable applications for art with Nature as my guiding principle. I call these collective textural works as "˜earthscapes', "˜groundscapes' and "˜earth fragments'. By layering, flooding, corroding, drying, erasing and building the textured surfaces, I become a part of the processes of nature, re-enacting her elemental occurrences on the microcosmic level of the canvas. As an environmental artist, my process also incorporates chance and happenstance while embellishing the surfaces with found objects and rubbings. At its core essence, the works explore humanity's complex relationship to nature, sustainability and harmonious living. My textural works invite the viewer to look deeper into the magnificence of nature unfolding around us on a daily basis. My paintings often resemble satellite images of the Earth from various distances, invoking places I have not yet visited, eliciting an imagined textural journal of nature viewed through the traveler's eyes. I have been working out of Toronto, Canada for the past 10 years, and have established a private business practice "˜Art Moves', based on commissioned works for designers, architects and developers for site specific projects. I am also a passionate arts educator who strives to make art accessible to the younger generation of artists in learning environments, fostering creativity, self esteem and community team building.