Missed Taken

The following paintings are from an exhibition I put together while I was a student at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Sask. Most were completed during a painting course in the summer of 2005, but some of the images originated during the summer of 2003. The final collection was presented as a whole in November, 2005, at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery as part of my B. F. A. graduating exhibition. I entitled the show 'Missed Taken'. The following is a description of what was intended by its content.

Mission Statement for 'Missed Taken'

Initially, I was exploring this subject, the female nude, through a series of contour drawings - a continuous line that made its way from broader to more subtle and elusive areas of the surface of the subject. They were mainly about line but naturally evolved into being as much about form. Once the drawing was transferred to canvas, everything changed. The subject was ignored, or pushed aside momentarily, and colour became the focus. In order to come back to the subject, I had to forget it entirely for the time being. Colour meeting colour was now what created the line and the form. The drawings were now lost, having become shades of its identity.

As the work progressed, other evolutions took place. Originally, the visual cue being used was the model. Now it had become landscape, inspiring the painting through colour and shape, either in an abstracted or a more representational form. Without ever altering the original drawings, the paintings continued to morph, now into something completely ambiguous. The lines existed but no longer referenced anything. The final painting, magnified, allowed me to look closely at a woman. She was form and shape but no longer identifiable. Quite suddenly, woman as subject was lost. The question had now shifted to whether or not her disappearance was relevant.

Questions abound when considering what identifies a woman. Some find satisfaction in the notion that there is an intrinsic connection between she and nature. Others, in leaving her in a state of nakedness, of objectification and consequently, eroticism. The identity of a woman is habitually affected by an endless list of factors which are social, cultural, economic, historic, etc. Unwittingly, I had engaged in questioning a woman's identity, and have come to realize that here in lies the culprit. Likely more affected by one of social habit, I got caught up. I cannot help but feel like a I have taken something from her through this attempt at identifying her with something. Anything. All the while, there is no answer to what woman is. It is ultimately more about a constituted identity than a natural, fixed one. No mistake about it.