“My QUILT series plays with the opaqueness, translucency and texture of encaustic and the versatility of the medium with regards to the art of collage.
The quilt-like loose squares are paintings within paintings: each square could stand alone as an individual painting, but together they become a unified whole where I pay careful attention to the tension between these separate components.

The use of a varied palette contributes to the painting’s visual richness. My previous foray into stain class is reflected in the jewel like quality of many of the pieces.
The opportunity to embed items into the works allows for an endless exploration of themes. In this series, I chose the butterfly and dragonfly, which are both abundant around my home in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
The dragonfly and butterfly images reference museum quality insect collections, which are often set within a grid format. These collections often surprise viewers with the diversity of species.”

“Based on a variety of lichen from around Ontario, this sculptural painting delves into the intricate interplay between natural phenomena and human impact, encapsulating the evolution of landscape, climate, and industrial impacts on the world and human labour over the last few centuries of the Anthropocene . The individual pieces are based on lichen collected during an arctic artist residency in eastern Iceland and are also reminiscent of continents and topographies, blurring the lines between the macro and micro, echoing tectonic plates shifting through geographic eras, and the nuanced impacts of climate change.”

“I was immediately drawn to the layering of Owen’s Lichen piece. The depths created by the overlapping of his cut shapes appeals to me, and is the critical element in bringing these pieces to life. At first I struggled with how I would be able to create the overlapping effect in my own work. I think that Owen’s pieces have an inherent whimsical quality that cannot really be duplicated in my paintings, but I am pleased with the affect of the recession and projection of the small painted boards that make up my piece. All of my work tends to have a fairly tight geometry which is countered by the whimsical nature of the painted squares themselves. Owen’s pieces by comparison have a texture created by nature and the whimsy is in his work cutting out from those metal panels.”

“I was intrigued by the grid format and the inclusion of butterflies in Glen Wallis’ encaustic painting Butterfly Quilt #8. In my response the piece acts as a framework for the space around it, the modified clothes hanger and fence give physical divisions to the space around them. As the modular moth pieces drift above the composition created by the wire. Moths the eaters of quilts, erasers of labour and time, compress the present into an observation of the ceasing of the past. ”