My lifestyle shapes the content and form of my art. I move around a lot. I’m often separated from my family and outside my home country of Canada. As a result, I’m usually in a state of adjustment, experiencing a new place or adjusting to an old one. My work is often a direct response to these experiences.
In Canada, 1998, I made work that negotiates and critiques issues of colonialism and development, that involve the use of water, land, and people. I take photographs of forests and one lake where my family has a cottage, and near where my German-Jewish great-grandmother’s family settled in the 1880s. The work also reference paintings by the Group of Seven, part of the colonizing nationalist project in Canada, 1915-1930. I alter my photographs in Photoshop, print them on paper or mylar, and apply thick abstract shapes in acrylic paint. Materials and imagery, realistic and abstract, interrupt, disturb, and co-exist.
I made Ghost Walk (1hr 36 min), when I lived and worked in Slovakia (eastern Europe), 2013-2017, a video of assembled footage tracking the walks I took while traveling in 2014. Together, the piece includes forest paths of Ontario, Canada, the border crossing of Amman and Israel-Palestine, Rail Depots at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, and the bridges and galleries of Venice, Italy. I recorded my present day negotiation of the histories of built and natural environments. I cross cultures, and unseen experiences and observations.
In this way, I explore the discourse of Art History and concepts that travel with me. I create something new from sources and expand upon their meaning. When I travel, I purchase art materials. In my art works, viewers navigate the temporal differences that meet in my art, art/history, my personal history, materials, and technology.
