Beyond the Canvas - transforming personal trauma and historical memory into art. Each work defies suffering, honours legacy, and affirms healing and renewal.
STRUGGLE + TRANSCENDENCE
For over four decades, I have turned to the arts as both a refuge and a means of profound self-exploration. My earliest memories trace back to childhood moments spent secluded in my room, armed only with a pencil and sketchbook, using line and form as instruments to escape the harsh realities of abuse and trauma. In these quiet, private worlds of drawn images, I discovered that art could function as a sanctuary—one that not only shielded me from immediate suffering but also allowed me to process and re-envision my experiences on my terms.
As my technical skills evolved and my understanding of various disciplines deepened in the subsequent decades, my practice expanded beyond drawing. I experimented with painting and sculpture, gradually broadening my visual language. This progression eventually led me to formal study at the Alberta University of the Arts, where I immersed myself in photography and design. Through these studies, I refined my aesthetic sensibilities, learned to articulate complex concepts through multiple media, and further anchored my work within a broader art-historical and critical framework.
Now, having come full circle some twenty years later, I find myself once again drawn to the immediacy and intimacy of drawing and painting. This return to my foundational practices does not signal a retreat into the past but rather a deliberate re-engagement with the core impulses that first sparked my creative life. It is a thoughtful embrace of the visceral, the tactile, and the direct mark-making processes that connect me, as a maker, with the narrative of my own lived experiences.
Today, my work stands at the intersection of personal history and artistic legacy. It integrates the resilience found in early sketches with the rigour and conceptual clarity gained through extensive study. By fusing traditional methodologies with contemporary critical thought, I seek to create visual expressions that resonate with the endurance of the human spirit, affirming art’s capacity to transform pain into meaning, and forging an ongoing dialogue between past and present, isolation and community, struggle and transcendence.
