For thirty-five years now I have worked in studios. Years ago they were dance studios where I worked as a performance artist with actors, dancers and musicians. In short, I collaborated with creative technicians of every kind of theatrical magic.

For the past 20 years the studios I work in have been art studios. The open spaces I once used for movement are now cluttered with tubes of paint, easels and art tacked to the ceiling. In my dance training I learned from Alwin Nikolais and Merce Cunningham to create onstage a gesture that points beyond the theatrical horizon into limitless space. As a visual artist, I still use that gesture in my work, but characters in my art with their postures and emotions now convey the élan…. the energy…for me.

The dynamics of shape, form, space, time and the illusion of movement taught to me by my teachers interact and inform my art, just as they did in my years as a dancer. My choreography unfolds across a flat surface of a canvas or a piece of handmade paper. I create a visual drama around a company of my own mythical figures that I immerse in a theatre constructed of texture, line, color and descending values of light. My own cast of characters continually reappear as I develop new pieces. They take on a different roles just as actors and dancers do in the theatre. One character in the company, "Raphael" appears alone in her portraits; performs solo in "She went to town once in her life and bought a hat…." And then reappears with other members of the company in "Soon It Will Be Time To Visit The Thief " and other pieces.

If you wish to meet these characters and trace this repertoire of my work to it’s source, you will eventually arrive backstage at my studio. There you will find me bringing together the understanding of a visual artist with that of a performance artist to create new art works; pieces with titles like "When We Were Close Inside A School of Fish," "The Beautiful Boat Dress," "Even Canadians Have An Afterlife" or " I only go to church if they let me wear my bird on my head."

The art works on my studio walls, hidden in a series of folders, placed in the homes of friends and collectors, in the galleries and a few museums, all these art works represent the sum total of what I have learned in all my years as an artist. The pieces I’m currently working on that you’ll see when you visit these are the unsolved mysteries of my work, the one’s that I am still learning from. When they are done revealing their artful ways to me, then the choreography is complete…for this time. I expect these explorations to keep me in the studio for another 35 years.