Night paintings

The grand scale of pollution emanating into the environment here can often be striking in its monstrosity. A haze of smog that glimmers on the horizon can often catch the light at dusk, creating a two-toned strip of cobalt and soft amber along the skyline. Buildings that pour out neon light into the darkness turn the surrounding environment into a remarkably vivid swathe of colours set against an indigo sky. I stood and watched my apartment turning the leaves on a tree from golden yellow, to auburn, to bright apple green, to royal blue, to violet. 

Fluorescent halos of light seem to exaggerate the darkness of sky. This inkiness has found a way into my paintings of late, a blackness around the edges of things that seem to suggest the true infinity of the universe. The edge of the land, and where that meets the limitless sky and beyond. 

Representation and abstraction often seem worlds apart but its differences can be split by a hair’s breadth. A flat block of colour that hovers on the surface of a piece of paper or board suddenly shifts into our view as foliage. Different perspectives and alternate world views can be seen and held simultaneously. Untethered from this world of space and line, and yet of this world completely, is it possible to create landscapes that anchor and destabilize the viewer at the same time, and create a land that simultaneously normalizes and transforms?