Artist Statement
In these pieces, three things exist in relationship—the landscape, the wood and myself. Each corner of the triangle imposes its own restrictions and peculiarities upon the image and is, in turn, expressed and revealed by it.
This land is not entirely cultivated: the edges; the damp spots; the rocky places; the corners. Here the prairie and the bush creep in and complicate the straight lines of roads and ditches. The wind and the sky are never still. Colours change chameleon like with the hour and the season. The prairie is full of incident and colour, though it does not fit easily into the generally accepted ideas of beauty.
The wood is sympathetic to landscape. The grain formed by year after year of growth, mirrors the undulating lines of cloud and land. The energy of the knife generates the shapes of trees or roads while retaining the character of the woodblock. Detail is simplified into mass, the subtleties of light reduced to cut or not cut. The combination of ink and paper is at once sensuous and commonplace.
I see myself in both the landscape and the wood. My prints express my experience of the landscape and play with the abstract elements of value and form. My work is and is not representational; is and is not abstract. It refers to the landscape and to itself as an object. The viewer is not deceived into thinking they are viewing the place depicted. The absent landscape is evoked by the present object.