A394 Token VII (bowl)

A394 Token VII (bowl)
8x5" Prisma Colour on panel
$60.00

An experiment using coloured pencils on a primed panel.

Anomaly Series

A393 Token VI (caregiver)

A393 Token VI (caregiver)
10x8" acrylic and prisma colour on board
Private collection

The Token theme is about the almost magical moments and events in our lives, often repeating, that can become symbolic to us. When a crisis arises, these tokens seem to fall from the sky; someone takes care of us, or something or someone suddenly appears to make us smile. Something special happens, or something doesn't happen (also gratifying, in some cases). Sometimes we don't notice them, little golden bits in almost every day. A smile. A word. The plaintive song of a bird. Moments of peace.

If we were to make a pile of all the little tokens we have ever received or found and count them, it would be shocking to see how many we collect in our lives, and how easily they roll away to hide in drawers or under other things, how easily they become tarnished. But if we all made a stack of them, if would be a mighty tower. It would make us look up.

Anomaly Series

A392 Artist & Anomaly V

A392 Artist & Anomaly V
24x18" acrylic, pastels, pencils
private collection

This is a lost and found work. I did not have it recorded in my catalogue, and had not taken a picture of it. One day my friend Deb visited, and she brought the picture with her. I had given it to her daughter and then forgotten it completely. So here it is, slightly out-of-place, since there were no other numbers available for it, and I can't quite make out the date. The picture surprised me...what was I thinking when I did it? I think I was simply enjoying the shapes and colours and patterns. Maybe it's my child artist, surrounded by her creative aura.

Anomaly Series

A390 Token V (speckled bird)

A390 Token V (speckled bird)
10x8" acrylic and prisma colour on board
Private collection

The speckled birds appeared in a vivid dream after I finished chemo. I (dreamed I) was lying in bed, peacefully free of care and pain. A flock of colourful spotted birds sat on me and the blankets, cooing and chirping softly. It was just me and the birds, suspended in a blissful dreamscape.

I think of those birds often. And now they have settled comfortably in my paintings.

Anomaly Series

A388 Token IV (fish & raven)

A388 Token IV (fish & raven)
12x12" acrylic & prisma colours on stretched canvas
Private Collection

The idea for the token sequence of little paintings began with a casual challenge from my mother. We were looking at her sketchbooks, in particular the pages of medallion-shaped designs, which she originally intended for pottery. I said that I thought they would make wonderful paintings. 'Show me how you would put a round design on a square canvas,' my mother said. I made a quick sketch similar to one of her designs, and liked it so much that I
decided to paint it.

The raven is one of my familiar old creatures, and the fish is one of my mother's favourite motifs.

Anomaly Series

A387 Token III (creature)

A387 Token III (creature)
8x10" acrylic on board
$60

Here the woman reaches inward, holding the creature that both torments and heals her. She recognizes and understands the process. It is another step forward.

Anomaly Series

A386 Token II (shell)

A386 Token II (shell)
8x10" acrylic on board
private collection

The woman is reaching behind her, listening to the shell of her past. The past whispers to her like a receding tide, almost overwhelming her with memories, and clouding her vision in waves. But she is already looking outward, glancing ahead with luminous vision. I believe she is pushing the past away, ready to approach her future, clean and unburdened.

A379 Visage One (bolt)

A379 Visage One (bolt)
12x12" watercolor on canvas
$90

Like a bolt, the flow of your world, the way you perceive your world, can change. And you are changed.

Anomaly Series

A378 Missing III (wolf)

A378 Missing III (wolf)
8x10" acrylic on board
$60

Anomaly Series

A377 Missing II (overflow)

A377 Missing II (overflow)
12x12" casein on canvas
private collection

Anomaly Series

A376 Memory fourteen (repose)

A376 Memory fourteen (repose)
6 x 8" acrylic on glass
Private collection

A375 Memory thirteen

A375 Memory thirteen

10x8" casein on board

$60

Anomaly Series

A369 Memory eleven (token)

A369 Memory eleven (token)
20x16" oil
private collection

Anomaly Series

A366 Memory ten (drop)

A366 Memory ten (drop)
20.5x15" oil on board with birch frame in non-repeating design, carved by artist
private collection

Anomaly Series

A362 Soulmates

A362 Soulmates
16x20" acrylic on acetate
commission, private collection

Anomaly Series

A361 Missing One (Inertia)

A361 Missing One (Inertia)
36x30" pastels on linen
private collection

Anomaly Series

A360 Memory Eight (Duality)

A360 Memory Eight (Duality)
carving on cedar 5 x 3.5"
$90.00

Anomaly Series

A359 Memory Seven (fish)

A359 Memory Seven (fish)
17" cedar carving
$175.00

Anomaly Series

A358 Visage One (Thought)

A358 Visage One (Thought)
15.5x5" poplar carving
$250.00

Anomaly Series

A356 Memory Six (step)

A356 Memory Six (Step)
7.5x12" relief carving on cedar
$150.00

Anomaly Series

A355 Memory Five (Folio)

A355 Memory Five (Folio)
12x12" casein on canvas
$90.00

Anomaly Series

A354 Memory Four (Face)

A354 Memory Four (Face)
6x6" casein on canvas
Private collection

Anomaly Series

A352 Memory Three (Fragment)

A352 Memory Three (Fragment)
14x11" casein on canvas
Private collection

Anomaly Series

A351 Memory Three (Forgotten)

A351 Memory Three (forgotten)
14x11" oil on canvas
Private collection

There are times when an event, an object, a person, or some thing we come across will make us aware of a definite gap or space in our memory, and with a flash of regret, we know we have completely forgotten something. It isn't the kind of forgetting that suddenly awakens at a prompt, reminding us of something tucked away in the back of our minds. Instead, it is a complete erasure, like the blank spot where a tile is missing, or a piece of the jigsaw. Personally, I like to take these blank spots and draw or paint something there, to fill the gap.

Anomaly Series

A349 Lightening Six (Sanctuary)

A349 Lightening Six (Sanctuary)
36x30" oil on linen
$850.00

It may be a little premature to bring our character here. She still has a long way to go before enlightenment. But I think she needs a goal, even if it is an imagined one.

Here is a structure of sorts, a place where there is tranquility and some order, but still growth. There is room for more, but a plan is in place.Is there such a place, a Great Union of Themes?

Humans need a quest, need questions to ask. Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going? How (en)lightened do we have to become? Maybe there are only ever-unfolding stages of knowing. Perhaps Sanctuary is only a resting place, before the next great quest.

The work and play of ideas is never-ending.

The next idea is already begun…

Anomaly Series

A348 Lightening Five (Repose)
24x18" oil on linen
private collection

In this painting, the figure reposes, the patterns around her amorphous and changing. The idea is based on the brain’s ability to sift through the day’s events in sleep, sort it, and make sense of it, then file it away. It is as if sleep has formed a protective skin that the outer world and all its chaos cannot enter, but only slide around and past, flowing away, like a tide of detritus.

Anomaly Series

A347 Lightening Four (Force)

A347 Lightening Four (Force)
40x30" oil on canvas$900.00

In this painting, the figure pushes layers of patterns (information, memory) aside to reveal a golden swirling emptiness. A reverse 'copy' of herself appears as a blue flow behind her, as she steps unburdened into the void, her blank canvas, unwritten page.

Anomaly Series

A346 Lightening three (filament)

A346 Lightening three (filament)
40x30" oil on canvas
$900.00

The figure is yielding smoothly to the streams of ideas and information around her, bending to look closely, investigating the beams around her, each different pattern. The feeling is of flow and the 'passive resistance' of the figure.

Anomaly Series

A345 Lightening two (flow)

A345 Lightening two (flow)
40x30" oil on canvas
$900.00

This figure has a light flow entering her, probably words or ideas, with a huge triple aura of red on the other side...her own formalised pattern. The background is a blue flow, like water or atmosphere. I added patterns in the blue background, cellular shapes and a few geometric forms, all random.
The strong red auras, iterations of the woman's shape, represent creativity, the heart blood of the artist. It flows out of (behind) the woman, in its refined form, marking her life-way. The yellow influx enters her, light and truth. It too is purified, simplified, refined from the cosmic noise.
The woman herself is reduced to her elemental form, without ornament, unburdened and open to inspiration. It is the moment of creation.

Anomaly Series

A344 Lightening one (utterance)

A344 Lightening one (utterance)
24x18" oil on linen
private collection

I wanted to show a single soul, almost inundated with information and noise, the beautiful clutter of the world. The word flow is the woman's perceptions, formalized in a completely separate stream.

The woman is submerged in her own patterns, a web encasing her, but she speaks out, nevertheless. Her hair falls out of her head, and words stream out of her (or streaming in), all dropping down to enrich her surroundings, to become green growth.

Anomaly Series

A343 Reformation I

A343 Reformation I
24x36" acrylic on acetate
private collection

The reformation sequence is my vision of entropy at work on my own paintings.

Pointillism depicts entropy very well, as the technique in itself is a scattering of bits without contour. The widely dotted bits are more amorphous, but making enough points of colour forms a new, cohesive shape.

This is analogous to the way the artist works. An artist takes an idea, pulls it apart, and reshapes it, again and again. The new 'view' is the artist's perception, a reforming of human experience, a reiteration of what has gone before. Like the stuff of the universe, a work of art is simply recombinant forms of irreducible ideas.

This is a deconstruction of a small portion of A320, Anomalous Piercings. I was interested in how far I could push the image before it was something else entirely. That is a grey area, though, that confounds me through every series. When does a new series begin, or when indeed does a painting end? Sometimes each new idea merges with or continues the old idea so seamlessly, that the transition is almost imperceptible.

Anomaly Series

A341 Wedding (for Heidi & Nathan)

A341 Wedding (for Heidi & Nathan)
24x18" oil on canvas
private collection

Anomaly Series

A340 Memory (flux)

A340 Memory (flux)
36x24" oil on canvas
$800.00

This painting is about how flow (inspiration) works, in and out. A cacophony of information and ideas enters the woman’s head, and a single rivulet of pure vision enters her eye, and pours out. The conversion from chaos to clear flow is the artist’s refining process, thinking and working.
The persistence of all those garbage memories we tend to store away, threatens to overwhelm us. You can see that this lady has managed to refine them into a crystal stream pouring steadily from her eyes.

As I worked my way around the figure, I was thinking about the bottom right corner, which is a geometric pattern, as opposed to the organic shapes of the rest of the painting. I added a very anomalous set of green pyramid forms in the lower right, very strange and somehow wonderful.

Anomaly Series

A337 Artist & Anomaly IV

A337 Artist & Anomaly IV
10x8" acrylic on glass
private collection

A pointillist study of an artist friend, France. I wanted to capture the joy and concentration of the artist at work.

Anomaly Series

A336 Memory Work

A336 Memory Work

20x24" acrylic on canvas

Private collection

Anomaly Series

A335 History II

A335 History II
16x20" mixed medium on panel
private collection

Another version of the clutter we carry around with us. Our own personal history, all the things we have said and done, swirls around us, sometimes coming into focus, but mostly remaining peripheral until something reminds us. Our history, like Memory, forms a life pattern for each of us, the positive and negative elements changing according to our experience and mood. Kaleidoscope and cacophony, an adornment and a burden; some people cling to their history, while others try to shed it, and don another.

Anomaly Series

A332 Sum XII

A332 Sum XII
11 x 14" acrylic on glass
$65.00

A331 Sum XI

A331 Sum XI
6 x 4" oil on glass
Private collection

A330 Sum X

A330 Sum X
8 x 6" acrylic, digital collage on board
Private collection