Artist statement

Observations and Conversations with Creator

My work lives in the space I call Observations and Conversations with Creator — mostly abstract paintings that try to hold the energy of an instant. The visual language comes from two lineages that have always talked to each other in my hands: Ojibwe woodland tradition (line as spirit, colour as medicine, the living world as relation) and the raw velocity of graffiti (gesture, layer, mark made before the mind can sand it down). I paint to listen. Each canvas is a record of a moment of attention — fire, water, collapse, mercy, rebirth — offered back as conversation rather than illustration.

I paint to stay in the conversation.

Practice

Primarily acrylic and mixed media on panel, canvas, and cement board with cedar backframes. Work is abstract and energy-driven, with occasional figurative or symbolic fragments. Titles often carry Anishinaabe language and northern land memory: Nokomis, Skoden, Water is Life, Sacred Fire, Nana, Aether, Creator, Please Have Mercy, Char Coal Rebirth.

Background

Born with Northern roots tied to Whitesand First Nation territory in Northwestern Ontario; lives and works in Ottawa. Self-taught painter whose studio practice runs alongside more than twenty-five years as a restoration craftsman — plaster, wood, stone, and historic buildings. The same attention to material, weather, and what a surface remembers informs both the trades work and the paintings. Father. Builder. Painter.