My work is informed greatly by my full-spectrum synesthesia. Creating art is a very physical, sensory process for me, and I experience that best when working in the field, on location, in the landscape.
Painting outdoors was not the cool thing to do back when I was studying Art History and Science at university; the focus was concept and theory. Professional artists in my sphere created indoors in the studio, working out ideas and rendering them in their chosen medium while attempting to convey assessments of a Postmodern world. Though I mostly did Performance Art during this period, my painting work was studio bound. As a constant traveler, I was always hurrying back to my easel to get expressive and tell the story with my paints.
One day atop a mountain in the Canadian Rockies, whilst thinking about the works of Emily Carr, Paterson Ewen and Robert Smithson, I had a personal epiphany: "It does not matter what the genre is. Potentially, an artist could convey a concept in a landscape painting made on location. Why not?"
To that end, I have spent years constantly painting on location -- forests, seascapes, falling snow, and the odd mountain. As a person with raging synaesthesia, to capture the essence of a place is something I feel best done in person, from life, with the wind and sound and tastes and smells whirling around you. There is power, joy and physical challenge in painting outdoors alla prima. The extremes of climate, oneness with the environment, and the sociable aspects of this method of making art appeal to me greatly.
Though technically Plein Air, using my synesthesia to guide my mark-making, colour selections, and iconography allows me to express deeper concepts in my work. Painting on extra large surfaces (using handmade giant brushes and big vats of paint) when working on location - and using these techniques on stage when doing live synesthetic painting to live music - keeps me grounded in the Performance Art roots of my youth.
In late 2017, I experienced a traumatic brain injury during a hiking accident. For several months I could not draw or paint anything representationally, and recovery has been a challenge. With no choice but to embrace this new reality, I moved well beyond the boundaries of traditional Plein Air. What began a few years ago as incorporating synesthesia-based abstraction while working in the field providentially now allows me to create fresh studio-made results that inspire me to contemplate the world in a new, boundlessly non-concrete direction. My personal challenge of describing the ineffable in paint continues.
