Painting Class – Memories of A Non-Dutiful Artist, 2005

234 digital video clips, as shown left, installed online as a website. Installation can/will take different forms.

I explore the idea behind the tradition specific to Southern Ontario; leaving the city of Toronto, and going to the cottage north of the city.

I documented the trees of the City of Toronto, that for me had an overt gesture. I took the videos as I walked, or rode my bike, to work. 234 video clips make up the collection of trees that performed, as part of the urban forest of Toronto.

Travelling between the city and the cottage, or as we call it in Ontario, the bush, was/is part of my life. I spent a lot of time at our family cottage throughout the year growing up and as an adult.

I took video clips at the lake at our cottage, as evidence of the colonizing project, its place and the presence of land, water, trees, and rock outcrop shorelines. 

In the 1950s and 60s parts of the land around the lake was opened for sale by the government of the Province of Ontario. The lands around Ontario’s many lakes were surveyed. People would buy small lots to build a cottage. In our case, this continued the colonizing project of Treaty 27 of 1822 and Algonquin unceded territory.