In a quiet tucked away oasis, close to my studio, I spent a year visiting and drawing what locals call the Secret Garden. Feeling the subtle push and pull of the seasons, the body of work that slowly grew from the sketches are visual montages of intimate moments of connection with the landscape as it moved through its seasonal cycles of life and death. The paintings play with the idea that landscape and our recollections of it are not one thing but are instead a collection of small, sometimes seemingly insignificant, things. Candid moments that are less representational of the landscape itself but form our memories of it when we close our eyes and remember.
This series took 2 1/2 years from start to completion. There is one painting for each month of the year and 4 additional plein air pieces. Like Boundary Bay’s Secret Garden, which the paintings depicts, this collection has been a labour of love.
