"Picking up the Pieces" began when we retrofitted our 1918 Winnipeg home. I found a gold-mine in the hundred-year-old walls we tore down. I spent hours, as if beach-combing, sifting through pieces and collecting them. I gathered a drawer full of “treasures,” keeping the curated collection in my finished studio. I started painting on them; gazing at the fragments, at the traces of past paint, wear, crazing, wallpaper and discolouration, I saw pictures the way one sees objects when staring at cumulus clouds. Painting them is mesmerizing, work that seems to effortlessly make itself... I’m surprised and intrigued by the outcome. Some look like relics from a fresco in Pompeii, some like portions of a mural in a prohibition era jazz club. They have this wistful, “some other happy time” quality to them. Broken, yet being made into larger, more beautiful pictures, retaining the imperfections gained through their experience.
I’ve found the plaster pieces to be most satisfying when I’ve delicately painted around what I saw. The incidental markings are so interesting, that I’ve no desire to cover them. When I only see parts of a figure or scene, I want to retain some of that ambiguity in the paintings…. to let the viewer finish imagining what’s missing, to involve them in the cloud gazing aspect, letting their mind wander, opening their minds to the possibilities of what’s there.
Pieces aprx. 2" in diameter each.