Calgary Art Galleries - Webster Gallery

Beginning at the age of nine, I felt a desire to express the beauty of nature and the things around me. The urge to draw and paint first arose in relation to wild scenery, where one can hear the silences, the murmuring of water, and everything that is alive. A strong sensation comes from seeing a bit of what the great work called nature brings out in terms of inner feelings. First and foremost, the dramatic poetry of nature is what I try to grasp in images.

Painting signifies capturing the spontaneous emotion aroused within and dialoguing with a subject that we know will, from the outset, determine whether the image produced will be good, will be intense and dynamic, and will posses this emotion that I am attuned to and which, having its own light, is the essence of painting.

The reflections in water, trees, nature in its grandeur and humility and mystery – all this I urgently paint out of a deep love for life and the need to convey this love. Nature, in its majestic nooks and crannies, is filled with dignity. There is a logical correspondence between art and life. I feel the need to refine the sensitivity of my inner vision. Art is a way of reflecting and questioning oneself. It is a way of delving deeper into questions over human power and knowledge and the potential of individuals.

What I think about while I am painting. I attempt to render what I took in at first glance, expand on this, and place it within a perspective. I experience a state of felicity, of intense magic. I could not live without painting. I consider this activity to be an homage to all that is beautiful. An artist must have the ability to leave a painting be in order to preserve its movement and avoid producing fixity.

The Russian painter Levitan told his students:
Try to discover the perpetual in the contemporary, to produce a portrait of one's country and one's time. [Try to convey] the unity of thought, sensitivity and understanding of the beautiful; address nature directly, see it with your own eyes, develop this memory we have of things and smells and even our capacity to recall the crowing of the cock.

One never really knows what one is looking for in painting. However, one can discover it by dint of feeling whatever it is one wants to hold on to above all else. I continue to believe that art is a place of consolation for the solitude of human beings.

If I may conclude with a special wish for all those who, like myself, while sitting by a pond or standing before a mountain, discovered a desire to share their feelings and thoughts, may my painting touch you, if ever so slightly.