Self Portrait: Seeking Truth Print

Jim has resided in and around Toronto most of his life. He graduated from the Art and Design Program at Mohawk College in 1977. Afterwards, his lifelong attraction to architecture led him to become a freelance illustrator for new building projects. His artist concepts were made in pencil, pen & ink, and acrylic. He also produced digital renderings using a program he wrote for that purpose. Demanding clients and tight deadlines honed his skills. Accuracy, detail and aesthetics defined his ethic. After four decades of producing only commissioned work, he retired from the commercial world. Casting aside conventional subjectivity and objectivity, his work reflects the ever changing miasma of phenomenon. Shifting light, shade, colour and form are seen as unstable. Jim seeks to convey this view in his art. Much of his work requires no specific orientation. For such paintings, Jim encourages the patron to decide which direction is up. They can rotate the paintings as desired. Or position them in new spaces. Doing so will break the hold of rigid viewpoints, and cause new perceptions to emerge. Jim invites the viewers of his artwork to topple their own walls of accepted reality, and let the child within reawaken. Like most artists, Jim has worked with many different artist mediums: watercolour, gouache, oils, pen & ink, pencil, coloured pencils, pastels, charcoal, conté, and digital. For his personal artwork he gravitated toward acrylics, preferring their ease of use and versatility. The variety of techniques available with acrylics are inexhaustible. They are generally quick to work with, allowing the painting process to flow with the speed of mind. Heavy impasto, uniform fields of colour, flat or ultra high gloss finishes, opaque, translucent or transparent layers are all available. Scraping, scrumming, constructive and destructive methods abound.