woodlands
I have lived the majority of my life in a forested acreage in Grey County, Ontario. My early and prolonged exposure to wild things and my deep personal intimacy with my home environment has been a life long inspiration in the creation of my work. My photo-based practice allows me to study and witness the profound intricacies of the wilderness while allowing me to use my process to articulate this intricacy though photographic intervention.
Throughout my 15 years as a practising artist I have been physically manipulating my photographs using hand-cutting techniques. The work, Woodlands, brings together my many years exploring photo deconstruction and manipulation, and through this body of work I use these techniques to further investigate the physical world around me. I spend my days observing and documenting the wonder of the natural ecosystems I encounter, translating these documents into compositions that articulate the natural forms and their relationship to each other. These composition are made into large scale prints which I then physically cut out, separating negative space from positive space. This process reveals a cut paper study of the interconnected forms of the forest, emphasizing the cyclical nature of the seasonal forces of growth and decay. Creating these works is a meditation on the intricacies and majesty of the wild landscape.