Into (2023): This painting’s name is in part inspired by Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” (though Colin James’s version is my favourite). The nuances of this painting’s colours emerged out of a much darker and more monochrome beginning. How it grew out of the blacks and greys of its start, I’m not sure. Regardless, the wonder of watercolour is that you create using layering. These layers at once impact what is to come and yet are constantly at risk of dissolution. With this kind of layering and unlayering that occurs, what is the “into” that we enter? 

Beyond (2023): For whatever reason, this painting reminds me of a carnival. There’s a whimsy to a carnival, a whimsy that slants reality into new possibilities. This painting asks, what is it to go into such a beyond? To go beyond limits, beyond one possibility into another, one way of knowing into another? Here, primary colours go beyond themselves, too, to become something else. What are we, what are they, when we go beyond?

Towards (2023): This painting is directional. It uses lines to point the way. But where do those lines go? If lines point us towards something, what happens if what they point towards is unpictured, is unknown?

Onto (2023): “Onto” is a preposition of movement, but it is also a preposition of discovery. We turn onto a road. We move onto new things. We also find ourselves “onto an idea.” The two colours in this painting perform the journey of “onto” and its magical movement of transition.

With (2023): With brings together various shapes and colours. They move as a whole, but there are elements of division too. In fact, what divides also unites and we are left to ask, what is it to exist in a space of ‘with’?  

Of (2023): This watercolour, along with For (see below), is a response to a query about whether any of these paintings could be reflective of St. Jerome’s University and its traditional colours. If these colours signal our community, if they are ‘of’ it, then what are they ‘of’? And what it is to be ‘of’ a place or ‘of’ a people?

For (2023): This piece, along with Of (see above), responds to a query about whether any of these paintings could be reflective of St. Jerome’s University and its traditional colours. Although I had been reluctant, I realized using these colours within the context of this series was important. Here, in For, I ask what is it to create for others? What is creation for?

Among (2019): This painting began as a series of dots, evolved into what I thought was an unsalvageable mess, and then all of a sudden found its unity and balance. The shapes seem to float towards an unpictured above; they are distinct from one another and a part of each other. In this way, this painting makes me ponder what it means to be among: surely, to be among others is not simply to be with them, is it?

Through (2023): This painting contemplates perspective. Its use of complementary colours manifests both the sea and the sunset. Am I seeing through the blue to witness the orange? Is the orange surfacing through the blue? Their palimpsestic being haunts with a simultaneous depth and flatness that asks is the hint of light right there to grab or through what must I travel to reach it?