“WATER’S EDGE” New Leaf Editions Gallery, Vancouver 2025 |

Label wall “water’s edge” showing etchings “Wave” (12 x 18″) and “Drowning” (4 x 6′) and “Swimmer” (12 x 16″) with the Painting “Swimmer” 48 x 60″. Directly above “Facing the Waves” 48 x 60″

The exhibition is a reprise of a similar show in Portugal a year ago. The The significant differences is the show at New Leaf had far fewer prints and combined the remaining prints with a triptych of paintings that demonstrat the interplay between painting and printmaking in the artists work.

The imaginary of the “water’s edge” is a boundary between the real and the mythical; the border between land and water is the intersection between the conscious and the unconscious, it exists as a symbolic transition, it is the point of departure, exploration, sensuality, the place of return and the location where origin stories begin. It is the abyss and the difference between being saved and damned.

This exhibition begins by exploring the theme through prints of the collective experience with then focuses on the consciousness of the individual.

The show began with a set of prints that explored the collective experience of leisure at eh water’s edge. These prints included (from right to left) “Potsdam” “Long Beach” “Sunscreen” “The Russians” “Trinidad” and “Playa Santa Martha (Havana)” and sown directly above “Pontresina”

The collective landscapes celebrate the multiple discourses that operate within beach culture. The water’s edge is the site of the democratization of leisure where exhibitionism, narcissism, celebration, privilege, and the absurd coexist with meditation and self-discovery. The images are landscape backdrops for figures, often tourists, who have colonized the sublime stage. Shown here in Vancouver the images construct a frame where the audience acts as a voyeur watching others in their public performance of pleasure.

The images of pleasure seekers are juxtaposed with pictures of individuals that invites introspective. The paintings and the prints they were born from capturing when the anxiety of “being” situates the subject at the precipice of experience, at the edge of choosing to launch into the unknown of the frightening, exciting, enticing immersion into the water. These images of people in nature is part of project that explores what constitutes authenticity and captures our increasing atomization in a modernity whose foundation is interconnectedness.

The exhibition constructs a dialogue between painting and printmaking by working in both mediums they allow each to be influenced by the other. Images are poached from one and then re-worked in the other medium allowing the innate possibilities inherent in each practice influence the outcome of the work. Drawing and making the work by hand is the central activity in the work.The images based on experience have been collaged from photographs deploying narrative forms like metaphor and analogy to excavate mundane moments for additional meaning. The works use representation of human life as evidence “of the profound complexity of living”.

“water’s edge” etching 12 x 16″ is shown below the painted version of it. The image was the genesis of the the show.

The exhibition is a result of a residency at the Ofinia Bartolemeu dos Santos (OBS) a printmaking studio Portugal built by “Barto” dos Santos who was a teacher of Paul’s at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Barto was a master at deploying aquatint in his work and living in Portugal, a country whose history is so immersed by the sea, Barto art was also obsessed with water imagery. The theme of the exhibit and the techniques Paul has used acknowledges the generative process of printmaking and mentorship. The prints were made in Portugal in 2024 and the paintings were made here in Paul’s Victoria studio following the residency.