Sur le Bord du Monde Artist Statement

The edge of the world suggests the edge of civilized society, the limits of humanity, the end of something. It is the meeting of our rational world with the forces it seeks to reduce into mere concepts. In this context, the ‘real world’ begins where our thoughts and bodies end so it will always be beyond our reach. If we frame our current times as an ending of something, it is only the ending of a series of processes that past societies helped put in motion, the end of a domination of nature based in fear, a heritage of destruction and a misplaced faith.

There is no end in nature. She is full of edges and contours, of interfaces between elements. We perceive this with every sunrise, the hard edge of the eternal horizon that separates the earth from the cosmos. The sun pierces this frontier on a daily basis and infuses our planet with the light of the stars. This light turns the edge into a place of transition, a dialogue between life forms and their environments.

Fires, floods and disease, once they have damaged our civilized world, eventually give birth to something new. We can only imagine what this will be. Perhaps it is the surrender of control, the acceptance of instability, the revelation of our long-held delusion that we determine our own destiny as a species. While we continue to spew poisons into air and land, choke rivers with plastic, and hypnotize ourselves with our own empty accomplishments, our civilization will one day consume itself and pass into geologic time. And the sun will still rise. As the saying goes, “we’re all in this together.”

The visual conception of this work is a continuation of explorations of natural forms such as those presented in the exhibition ‘Natural Cycles,’ earlier this year. A surface of wood, with its subtle textural imperfections, provides a starting point for the initial composition. The accentuation of certain contours with sympathetic colours guides the creation of forms on the surface. These arbitrary forms are developed in such a way as to allow subtle suggestions of real phenomena to emerge. The intention is to create a space where the tangible effects of light, land and water can interact with the realm of the mind and the spirit, a sort of conversation between the seen and the imagined.