What does “loss” look like?

If a physical space can express the life of its occupants, these works ask what happens when a space is no longer lived in, when its occupant no longer exists?

The images are of spaces and objects left behind, stripped bare, exposed and reduced to their continued functionality and imminent repurposing.  Once filled with life, energy, existence the images are hollow, empty, abandoned. These works were inspired through the act of clearing out the homes of close relatives who recently had passed away.  The imagery questions the nostalgia that welds people to the places and things they inhabit and shows the void of what has been left behind.

A dialogue between printmaking and painting exists and both are rooted in the traditional processes of each medium. Drawing is a central activity in the work and in a time where artistic practice leans on digital and lens-based processes the continued act of drawing is itself felt as a subversive practice.

The methodology of the mark making is aligned to the imagery. A tension exists between constructed forms that are built with ephemeral tonal overlays, embossing, and aquatints that are then eviscerated (in etching by acid emulsifying thinner sheets of copper and in painting by washing painted forms with turpentine) and then with transparent glazes re-constructed.  The process seeks to develop the sense of historicity to amplify themes of displacement and loss.

This work is heightened because during the pandemic our local, national, and global community has been overwhelmed by loss. Our sensitivity to grief is more acute than ever. Through the depiction of interior spaces an archeology can be unsurfaced revealing layers of an intimacy of lived existence that death leaves behind and represents an imagery to house our loss. 

In addition to empty spaces the exhibition gives voice to the same space animated with life. The same apartment on Comox Street housed a family for 25 years and the imagery explores the lives of its occupants as they fill the room with the objects of their shared experiences and is the venue for narrating their memories.  These works are an important corollary to the imagery of “Loss” as they provide a counterpoint to the emptiness of the abandoned rooms.  They fill the space and infuse it with nostalgia, personality and character.  

  

Our collective experience through the pandemic has heightened our empathy to loss and our sensitivity to space . Our awareness to grief is more acute than ever. Through the depiction of interior spaces an archeology can reveal layers of an intimacy gained through lived existence.  The empty spaces represents the void left behind by death and functions as a space to house our loss