Artist Statement for ‘Screen Room’ Rails End Gallery, August 2009

In these tree paintings, I was interested in focusing on the intersection of representation and abstraction. What could be more abstract than a circular dot of gray? And yet, different shades of gray dots in the right places can make a photographic representation. Even the low resolution of these images does not prevent them from being read as photographic.

The Impressionists and Post-impressionists made the modern discovery that representation was possible with isolated bits of tone or colour, formalizing the earlier examples of painters Frans Halls and Diego Velasquez. Our eyes and brain work to optically mix these bits into a visual continuity. This knowledge has been absorbed into the technologies of offset printing and, more recently, of digital imaging.

I have long been fascinated by representations which possess this explicit duality of parts and whole. For me, this is a powerful visual metaphor for collective achievement, where everyone plays a modest but precise and essential part. However, The duality does not exist without a third and equally essential element: the participation of the viewer.

There is an act of faith in accepting representations as stand-ins or interpretations of that which is real. I'm interested in giving responsibility to the viewer, when looking at these pictures, for deciding whether they are trees or dots, or determining at which viewing distance they seem to change from one to the other. I say ‘seem to’ because what is changing is not the picture itself but the viewer's perception of it based on distance.

Distance is something which everyone must constantly negotiate, for the manner in which they observe and interact with the world. Distance is a personal choice and responsibility.