It can be exciting if you pay attention to the colours that your neighbours use to make their houses unique. The suburb where I live reflects this. As I walk its streets certain images form in my mind images of all the houses exploding with colour. We all conform to a desire to be different. This longing for difference triggered this series of work. I find mundane colours everywhere, a grey house here, a brown house across the street, three brick houses next to each other and then out of nowhere like a sore thumb a vibrant yellow house. During the walks I take note of the kinds of houses and interesting colour combinations I encounter. Quickly making sketches using these notes and maps, I pull out shapes, lines and colours of interest. I add the grid of streets and create a floating ground with the use of encaustic wax and oil paint. The natural way wax flows over things and encases them is like a frozen moment in time. .
The contradiction I have with the use of Suburbia as subject is very simple; whatever is taken away is incorporated into the name of that suburb. This often is a “harmony of sight/site, sound and thought focuses on simple contradictions, and discrepancies between what is said and what is done. 1 ” For instance there is a suburb called “Pheasant Run” in Mississauga, just down the street from my own suburb (surprisingly called “The Pines,” even though there are no pine trees around.) Pheasant run has no pheasants running through it.
This nostalgic feeling of being one with nature is present here although everything to do with nature was taken away so these suburbs can be built. Then nature is placed back into the suburb where space permits. Space is a limited commodity, which will one day run out; then the suburbs will be turned into something very unpleasant. I for one do not wish to be there when that happens.
1. Andrew Hunter, The Other Landscape, Canada: Edmonton Art Gallery, 2003
