black, white, red:
Artist Statement

This work was exhibited as part of a group exhibition entitled Alchemy at the Franco Manitoba Cultural Centre and Remember Rwanda at the University of Winnipeg

Artist statement

Memories resurface as history repeats itself in central equatorial Africa. Compelled to confront King Leopold's ghost, I reread Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and requested access to my father's files, which included newspaper clippings and personal reports documenting the destruction of people and place during a volatile period in Congo's history. The resulting visual works are marks of memory.

Fear as felt by all human beings is culturally and individually variable. Its varied masks are countless. It influences behaviour—from daily interaction to large-scale international decisions—and maps routes of existence, determining choices and destinations. Fear requires risk assessments based on actual experience yet, in its formless construct, yields an erosion of quality of life. It contributes to chaos, death and destruction, tracing devastation on the skin of the planet and on the bodies of the inhabitants, marking all.

This work, as an intuitive expression, maps the palpable, skin crawling, heart racing, palm sweating prickles of fear traced on the skin of experience and paralyzing possibility.

Marked by concrete and formless fear, I scar, scratch, nick and engrave a malleable material. The resulting impression is a litany of personal fear tracking the body's reactions. These images etch the damp cold skin, inform the clenched muscles, upset the organs and probe the sixth sense, the subconscious, and the anxious unease that affects behaviour