A week-long painting retreat to a cabin on Georgian Bay called the Knothole inspired a series of work. Sited on an area with a great deal of exposed rock of the Canadian Shield, there is a constantly changing landscape dominated by the water and the rocks.
I love these ancient rocks, so weathered and yet so enduring, with their many colours from greys to ochres to pinks.
This piece is not a literal interpretation, but an emotional connection with nature. It shows the larger patterns in the rocks, even when they are broken and aged.
The collage elements include printed book pages, and printed tissue papers. I create the colored tissue papers using a gelli-print method. The tissue paper is all rescued from packing materials, and the books are old and are used to clean my brushes. These pages then become collage elements! Some of the more interesting textures were created with acrylic skins -- paint that has been carefully peeled off another surface (generally my palette) and then carefully stuck down again. Some of the water marks area created by scraping through the paint when it is wet, spraying it and creating drip marks, and using paint markers.
As with all my recent work, this piece includes the most recent monthly atmospheric CO2 number: 426.69
