statement

"If I could say it in words, there would no be no reason to paint."
--Edward Hopper
In approaching the drawing work I have been developing over the past four years or so, mainly large-scale works centering on crows and ravens, material has been at the heart of the process. Charcoal, ink and tar, as well as scavenged and hoarded materials, have been the media of choice, as I want the material to convey the essence of these birds. The work is scaled with the intention of creating a meeting of minds or reciprocity: in as much as we are contemplating them, they seem to be equally contemplating us. The stark, high contrast and large scale also demand our attention and consideration (as birds in the corvid family crows, blue jays, magpies, jackdaws, ravens, etc. so often do). The crows and ravens in these drawings are ultimately and inevitably surrogates for human presences. The intelligence, adaptability, humor, annoyance, unpredictability, persistence, mimicry, resourcefulness and deviousness of these birds, to mention but a few of their traits, rival the breadth of our human capacities, calling into question whether those qualities truly separate us from them in kind, or simply in magnitude.

bio

born:Newmarket, Canada

education:

Ohio State University, MFA, 1995
NSCAD University, BFA, 1989

selected awards/honors

Artist Fellowship, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst, VA 2011
Third Place Award, Marlboro Gallery National Juried Exhibition, Largo, MD 2010
Grand Prize, Sustain Juried Exbibition, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, Springfield, IL 2010
Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo Individual Artist Grant, Kalamazoo, MI 2009

selected publications

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum of Art; Birds in Art, Wausau, WI: p. 27, 2010
Manifest Gallery; International Drawing Annual 5, Cincinnati, OH, 2010
Krasl Art Center; Biennial Sculpture Invitational, St. Joseph, MI: p. 9, 2010
Museum London; Off the Norm, London, ON: p. 12,13, 2009

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Lay of the Land, two person exhibition, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, Springfield, IL: March-April 2011
Corvus en Banc, solo exhibition, Schmidt Art Center, Belleville, IL: Jan-Feb 2011
Speak, Memory: Works from the Corvus Series, James C. Westin Gallery, Kalamazoo, MI: Nov-Dec 2009

selected group shows

National Juried Sculpture Exhibition, Marlboro Gallery, Largo, MD, 2010
Sustain, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, Springfield, IL, 2010
From the Center Now, Women's Caucus for Art/Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2010
Sculpture NOW 2010, Edison Place Gallery, Washington, DC, 2010