BJW Sculpture Gallery in Esquimalt BC

Artist's Bio  

I have walked ten thousand kilometres along forest floors, up mountain trails, along Great Lakes shorelines, to carry these amazing iconoclastic cast of wood characters back to my studio.

I have profound respect for the extravagant beauty found disguised in nature waiting to be discovered and extended by human imagination.

Trees struck by lightning in the forest; cedar root fence-lines seasoned over a hundred years; Newfoundland sea salted wood; 19th century Romanian oak from horse wagon village lanes; hardwoods with natural black spalting patterns; some with rocks actually embedded in the wood flesh. Wood is my marble, my bronze. Wood is the canvas on which I paint. I co-create with Nature, my awesome partner, whom I want to bring into your home to speak to you of its larger matrix of which you are part.

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Influences:

During my life I have lived and partnered with fascinating artististic personalities and I do not under-estimate the importance of their influence. Twice, I worked for the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts, as Manager of Communications and later as Consultant to help design year-round performing and visual arts programs at the Centre. Immersion in a prolific atmosphere of talent and generative new works creation was a great gift that still energizes me.

Once many years ago when the earth was still green, I co-focalized a program for the Ontario Government, called Art Trek. Six teams of artists travelled in vans full of art supplies, all over the province, giving two to three-day art workshops for all ages to communities.

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Sculptures:

The wood grain textures and warm colours of these pieces literally invite the simple reassurance that the sense of touch brings. With these sculptures, eyes are attracted beyond the flat two-dimensional of canvas painting to 3D, add the dimension of Time and you enter 4D. Famed 'Group of Seven' Canadian artist, Tom Thompson, out in wilderness, often chose to paint on slabs of wood, valuing the texture of realism thereby afforded. Colours penetrate and diffuse differently into wood, shine differently from wood.

Because each of these pieces is totally unique and was often selected due to highly unusual, even magical spacial configuration- truly one of a kind- when you change your viewpoint (viewing point...front to back, side to side, bottom to top, angles etc.) you are often looking at what presents as an entirely new piece, different features, speaking another paragraph in the symbolism evoked by the complex whole. This enriches the dialogue between the art and the perceiver; as new doors of understanding and appreciation are opening as one’s own life deepens in experience.

As far as I know, no one else is doing exactly what I am doing, employing acrylic paints, shaping and wood burning to iconoclastic native wood pieces to create a distinctive mood and atmosphere that may very well accentuate what the best interior designers are creating for their clients.

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An important influence in my sculpture pieces is CBC Radio II jazz, classical, rock and world music... cut, filed, stroked, brushed into every piece. Living in semi-wilderness in Muskoka first compelled this artistic urge forward thirty years ago. Often in the middle of the night, I am drawn out into the studio, excited in a fever of creativity, working on one or several sculptures simultaneously, music blaring, time ignored. I love this, in fact, I cannot stop.

Subtle Voices within the Art:

 Okay, not religion, but I would say this sculpture work is done with an awareness of Spirit; perhaps seeking in the art to apply a thought system that is a psychological approach to spirituality, using quantum forgiveness as the main process of salvation, for me as an individual. Sculpture becomes part of my personal self-study course helping me find outer expression in form, applying the concepts as best I am able at a given point of time. I watch for the vertical, extend the horizontal, pay attention to the artistic language that comes forth. I have the sensibility and claim the poetic license of a poet.

The quality of the output is another thing, but I do write my process and the thoughts down in a poetic way for each piece (available upon request). It might offer an interesting starting point for your own relationship to the piece of mine you are viewing. No problem if you totally disagree or see another vision; that you are provoked to think with your decision-making mind is the greater goal. It is my intention to communicate with you, my friend, across time and space; reaching out to you in your personal journey of awakening to your meaning, your purpose for being here now in this best of all possible worlds.