Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Globe & Mail

The widely known and prolific Toronto art critic Gary Michael Dault wrote an excellent review of my 2009 show at Nicholas Metivier Gallery.
Gary is a skilled and thoughtful writer, and has published many articles about me over the years. I have really appreciated his continuous support.

He starts by describing my work as "strange, otherworldly paintings," which I thought was an apt and exciting introduction. I was also quite honoured and happily surprised to see the giant reproduction of my painting published.

Gary writes:

"The frayed and feathery, fantasy-borne, tower-like buildings he erects, as well as his ongoing suite of filigreed, boa-like graphic fandangos based on baroque letters (German initials from the 16th century), inhabit a perpetual evening."

"The pictures are born, as well, from his own endless looking. His paintings appear to have seamlessly assimilated such diverse sources as the 19th-century fantasists like Arnold Bocklin, Richard Dadd, Mervyn Peake, illustrator Arthur Rackam perhaps, the blue-whiteness of Delft china, and the distant delicacies of classic Chinese landscape painting (which you can see in the pretty recession of the landscape around the solitary pagoda, and in the puffs of gossamer cloud rising in the distance)."