On September 22, 2025, I began a paid, six-week residency at Juniper Books with the “Creatives at Work” project funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and sponsored by the Arts Council Windsor and Region. This program paired artists of all genres to work within the physical setting or locale of businesses and industries in our area. My residency concluded on October 31, 2025, and the resulting works completed during this period are on display at ARTSPEAK GALLERY from November 2 -9, 2025 and includes additional work completed prior to the residency.

During the residency, I produced several, very small landscape paintings on board. Working on this scale was necessary due to the small working space that I was afforded at Juniper Books. All of these small studies were carefully controlled explorations, employing a variety of different artistic styles as I examined how best to achieve my personal insights in producing a unique work in my larger studio at home that was keeping with my artistic vision and style as an artist.

All these studies served as precursors or antecedents for the completion of a singular, large scale (48 X 72 inches) mixed media painting entitled, “my mind is tangled up in a lackadaisical skirmish”. This title was borne from a randomly selected piece of text, torn from an old, discarded book. This serendipitous process of selecting a title before I begin to paint, has been part of my working methodology for over thirty-five years. Using this piece of text as a springboard for ideas, concepts and image generation, I have incorporated the notions of landscape and word imagery into this new work. The painting is dominated by a black silhouette of fir trees with their overlapping and tangled branches superimposed over a viewpoint of the waters of Lake Superior and an opposing, distant shoreline. This scenic vista is based on one of the views that I frequently experience at my summer studio located at Silver Islet in Northwestern Ontario near Thunder Bay.

The imagery this painting was created with a spirited, gestural application of paint with more drawn-like mark-making than controlled brushwork. Accordingly, I attacked the acidic green and yellow background surface with an intended looseness or lackadaisical and affectedly pensive approach to the artwork. I wanted to achieve an energetic, released, and unshackled arrangement of solid and fragmented linear marks made with speed and untethered emotion. I wanted to move away from the deliberate and carefully controlled application of paint that I employed in the small landscape studies.

Once I removed myself from those traditional constraints, I was free to be “wild” and respond to the imagery without fear, knowing that if I wanted to paint the image with clarity and authority that I could have, but chose not to. It was through this residency that I was able to combine the skills that I had acquired and taught to others for many years with the artistic nomenclature that has become my personal, signature style as an artist.

Accordingly, I want to thank the “Creatives at Work” program committee and the ACWR for selecting me as one of the six recipients participating in this project. It is my hope that this funded program can continue in the future to the benefit of the artists, writers, musicians, craftspeople, and the public at large in our region.

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November 2 - November 9

Artspeak Gallery

1942 Wyandotte Street E
Windsor, N8Y1E4
Phone: 5199916350