This was my presentation: TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

We do not see with our eyes, we actually see with our brains.  The eyes take the signals induced by patterns of light on the retina along the optic nerves to the brain, where they are interpreted as images that reflect reality. Actually everything is seen upside down, but inverted by the brain.  In the late 1800’s a Frenchman did an experiment when he wore glasses with inverting lenses.  At first he could hardly walk, but after a week he was able to ride a bike.  His brain adapted by re-inverting the images

I can’t say that I was motivated by this fact in painting the pictures shown here, but it can be inferred that everyone’s vision and interpretation of the world is distinct.  Here is an example of how this process worked for me.  One day I was lying in bed and I noticed with fascination a complex pattern of lights and shadows moving across the ceiling.  I was motivated to understand this mysterious phenomenon: since the sun was in the sky above, how could it be reflected on the ceiling of my room?  

Like a good scientist, I investigated  and saw that the light reflected onto the ceiling came from reflections of the sun on the front windows of cars parked in the car park far below.  As the sun moved, the strips of light through the blinds moved across the ceiling, and as cars moved the pattern of lights changed.  I had to paint this phenomenon.  Looked at as a painting it could be seen as a work of abstract art, a series of bright lines on a yellow background, with a circle nearby (the ceiling light), perhaps a Kandinsky.  

I eschew the separation of art into “representational” and “abstract” forms.  Much of my work lies at the interstices of these extremes.  I am fascinated by the abstract nature of much of reality, the ephemeral play of light and shadow and of reflections.  

REFLECTIONS: From an early age I was fascinated by shadows and reflections.  Nurit Klein, who curated this exhibition, saw that many of my paintings are based on reflections, and she proposed to focus on this aspect of my work.  From earlier paintings done in the 1980’s of “Lights on a wet road,” “Reflection of a girl on a train,” “Reflection of a tree” and “Sunset 6009” to a later painting such as “Cityscape, Calgary” (2009) where the whole painting is a reflection in a glass building, I have been fascinated by reflections.  

There is also another notable innate feature in my work, namely geometric patterns, usually a pattern of lines or squares.  All of the paintings represented here have such a pattern, and so do many more not shown.  I cannot satisfactorily explain this phenomenon, except as a desire for order in the universe, a motivation that underlies my interest in science.

NUDES: The future of mankind depends mainly upon one thing, men and women’s attraction to each other. The nude has been a subject of fascination for artists since man began to draw on cave walls. The earliest known Mediterranean religions worshipped Goddesses, who were the epitome of female fertility.  

I am therefore perpetuating an ancient trend by painting nudes.  Hopefully, my nudes are a little different.  For me, painting a nude is like painting a landscape. You have the same hills and valleys, the same shadows without which the nude landscape has no seductiveness.   

I have painted nudes with a difference from “zebra woman” to “progression of form.” These paintings are intended to be both beautiful and provocative.