NOW SHOWING

I think most of us can relate to the occasional need for a late night walk alone. Sometimes it's about finding space to think, clearing your head, or getting out for a breath of fresh air. Other times it's simply part of everyday life - walking home after work, passing through the city on your commute, or heading out to meet friends

“Out Late, Be Back Soon!” is a part of my ongoing exploration of contemporary urban landscape painting. My source material comes from late night walks mostly around Halifax’s downtown core, parts of North End, and the interiors of restaurants, bars, clubs, and other spaces that make up the city's nightlife. These places are locations that I return to repeatedly, carrying layers of personal history while also documenting the city in this particular moment in time. As with past work, many of the places I’ve painted have already changed or disappeared, making the work an evolving record of Halifax's shifting landscape.

I’m happy to have the show overlap with Pride week here in Halifax, and although the paintings are not overtly queer in their subject matter, my perspective as a gay man is very much built in to the way way I experience these spaces. Late night wandering has shaped much of my adult life, from the excitement and freedom of getting involved in nightlife and finding myself during my early twenties, to quieter more contemplative moments of walking alone and reflecting on my identity, relationships, and life. The work reflects those experiences without illustrating them directly, allowing personal memories to exist alongside more universal experiences of moving throughout the city.

Most of the paintings start out as quick blurry digital snapshots – iPhone photos taken while out, and compositional sketches or small colour studies done on paper. I usually combine these together to end up with a resolved painting. I’m drawn to visual qualities like intense saturated colour, contrast of light and shadow, and the atmospheric properties of fog and weather. Sometimes I can’t necessarily describe with words what it is about a scene that holds my attention when I’m out, but I know when I feel it and I always try to document it in some way to return to later to paint. Recently, I've found myself working earlier in the evening, drawn to dusk and “blue hour” where we have combinations of natural and artificial light along with intense saturated cobalt hues. I work with a lot of direct mark making and contemporary paint application methods influenced by both impressionism and abstraction.

These paintings are rooted in observation and are ultimately about translating the experience of being in a place rather then illustrating it in a detailed photographic way.