Her Lap of Roses

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Acrylic on paper (1994)

Size (not documented, work now in private collection)

This painting was included in my series Breast Cancer: A Progress, though it is not about breast cancer at all but is simply a celebration of women. As I wrote at the time, it was included in the series to remind us of what we are fighting for against this devastating disease.

I provided the following background information for the show at Art Noise Gallery, Kingston, 1994.

Sources/Acknowledgements:

Centre panel: Botticelli (Italian, 15th century), Primavera (detail: lap of Flora)

Side panels, figures: Goddess figures from ancient cultures

Side panels, backgrounds: Paul Klee (Swiss, 20th century), Jardin de Roses

One in Nine

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Acrylic on paper (1993)

In the early 1990s I created a series of eight paintings, exhibited in 1994 at the Art Noise Gallery in Kingston. Breast Cancer: A Progress was meant to follow in the tradition of the formal, symbol-laden compositions in sequence used by Christian and other cultures to inspire contemplation, to bring the soul of the viewer to a state of spiritual readiness for understanding. I was particularly inspired by Giotto’s commemoration of the events in the lives of Jesus Christ and Mary, his mother.

To view the full series of paintings, see my new page, Breast Cancer: A Progress (currently under construction). I apologize for the quality of the image; I am working from old slides and negatives of these works, as the originals were donated after the exhibit to the Canadian Cancer Society. My understanding is that they were given by the CCS to some of their major donors for their private collections (see CV page, Collections).

This painting is the first in the sequence, titled Breast Cancer: Incidence. The phrase “one in nine” encapsulated in 1990 for many women their fear of the rising incidence of breast cancer. See my new page Part II: 1990-2010 for an explanatory paragraph, including Sources and Acknowledgements, I wrote about this piece back in 1992.

Self Portrait as Primitive

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Conte on paper (1989)

This drawing was originally titled Under the Hill, after East Coker by T S Eliot.

“The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.”

I said in 1989 that the image is about death and rebirth, about the passage of time and the rhythm of generations; that it also has to do with the elemental part of ourselves which we discover, recognize, only in times of extremity.

Fire Escape

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Acrylic, ink, pastel on canvas (2024)

Size: w 20″ x h 40″ x d 1.5″

After having posted several “in progress”‘ images of this painting, I announced with great fanfare back in May that it was finally finished. It was not.

Air Strike

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Acrylic, graphite, washi on cradled birch panel (2024)

Size: w 24″ x h 20″ x d 1.5″

This piece is being exhibited this month at the OKWA (Organization of Kingston Women Artists) annual show at the Window Gallery in Kingston, through to the end of November. The theme of the show is Change. My statement is as follows: “Air strikes by drones are a change from past warfare.  Otherwise, no change.  No peace.”

Ollie in Gaza

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Acrylic, ink, re-harvested PETE plastic on linen (2024)

This piece is now finished. It will be exhibited in Kingston for the month of November (Window Gallery) as part of the OKWA (Organization of Kingston Women Artists) annual show. Here is the statement I wrote in response to the show’s theme, Change:

“Ollie the orangutan was photographed in 1988 for a book about endangered species.  In my painting he is bewildered, palms up in despair, bearing witness to the death and destruction in Gaza over the past year.  This artwork itself has seen much change, originally a dense network of red dots but layer by layer overlaid with paint and buried in plastic rubble, symbolizing the tens of thousands of individual lives lost.  If he is still alive, Ollie is 42 years old.  I show him fading from our view just as these magnificent creatures are vanishing from the world, approaching extinction.”

Ollie in Gaza (Work in Progress)

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Acrylic and ink on canvas (2024)

Size: w 16 ” x h 20″ x d 1″

Ollie the orangutan was photographed by James Balog at Marine World Africa in California in 1988. In captivity, an orangutan can sometimes live into their late 50s. If he is still alive, Ollie is 42 years old.

Heart and Science

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Acrylic on paper (2004)

Size: w 12″ x h 19″

“Between 2700 and 2400 B.C., roughly contemporaneously with Old Kingdom Egypt, craftsmen in the Cycladic Islands of Greece sculpted female nudes in marble whose elegance and simplicity was not to be seen again in art until the work of Brancusi and Modigliani.” (From The Cycladic Spirit, Masterpieces from the Nicholas P. Goulandris Collection, by Colin Renfrew with Introduction by Christos Doumas, 1991). Hard to argue with that statement. The folded-arm figures in this magnificent book were photographed by John Bigelow Taylor. For this painting I chose to work from one of Taylor’s photographs of the Chalandriani variety, a figure with squared off shoulders and a long cylindrical neck. The black box inserted into the figure’s chest is my addition of course, a CT scan image of the heart.