Marginalia

1: marginal notes or embellishments (as in a book.)

2: nonessential items.

In this series these poured, sewn, and dyed paintings have evolved based on the artists own marginalia – notes left in the margins. Using forgotten notes from sketchbooks as a jumping off point and working on multiple pieces at once, the works develop through a process of layering paint, inks, dyes, and textiles. Taking a collage based approach to the painting process, paint and textiles are moved across the canvas until a sense of balance is created in the composition. These works combine colour, form and texture to explore the limits of paint on canvas.

The marginalia note that each piece is based on can be found in its title. Some have more obvious visual cues like Soft Pink On the Right, where wide brush marks of pale pink paint can be seen along the right edge of the canvas. Others are more conceptually based, like I Don’t Live Here Anymore, a line from a poem written down next to several compositional sketches. These irregular, curvilinear forms are drawn from sources that include vintage textiles, calligraphic brush strokes and fashion photography. This approach to abstraction embraces intuition and accident as it seeks to make the abstract something familiar.