Growing up in a rural setting I have always focused my attentions on bush landscapes and started drawing from a young age influenced by my Grandfather, Uncle and Mother, who are all artistically inclined.

For as long as I can remember I have been fasinated by the way that stories in our indigenous communities have been told and represented visually, where the story does not have to be morally well rounded or manipulated to guide minds in a particular direction, it is simply a story expressing some underlying truth or journey into the past and the veiwer or listener is left to ask their own questions and come to their own conclusions to what it means for them and their journey.

In most indigenous cultures, stories were told almost as maps, maps for the physical environment and important things such as food sources, hunting grounds and sacred sites. It is quite difficult to understand where we trulywish to go without first knowing where we have been.

There have been times throughout my life when I have reached a point where I am completely lost and I always compare this to walking through the bush as a child. If I stop and close my eyes, my mind remembers certain features of the landscape in my journey and creates a somewhat exaggerated story in my mind linking these features together so that I can not only remember the way home but also be confident that I will imagine maps for the future and follow them to new stories.

In painting it seems that the most important thing is good balance between light and shade, and like everything within our physical world all things within the painting should reflect the light of those things around them. Nothing is left unaffected by the things around them, even stories.

I started to paint my journals in Canada when after an accident left me with two broken legs and a broken back I was forced to examine my own story and where I was going.

You find in situations like these, situations of survival and extreme pain your mind will systematically destroy all thoughts that do not give you hope or help you heal.
And in this completely incapacitated place, thoughts of lost loves, desires of money and fame, the drive to understand everything and ideas to control given situations all became completly useless, and the only thing that really mattered was searching my mind for good times, feelings of love and peace so I could map out a way to get back to them.

People abstract the events of their lives and create a dream, a particular path that may be a little far fetched, a little exaggerated but ultimately leads them to acheive a goal that although is different from the original dream, far surpasses it in many ways. When you set out to acheive the impossible you never get there but on the way you always achieve the improbable; with hard work and a flexible plan.

What I plan to do by asking a series of questions is to prompt a story that can be mapped out visually using my own artistic licence following to the best of my ability the themes, styles and colours my client prefers and has indicated to.
In such a busy world many people have made the choice to study or work so hard that they lost the chance to dream about the things they care most about and the reasons they are working so hard in the first place.
What I hope to achieve in each of my paintings is to express my client's dream or story visually so they can be reminded of it from time to time upon veiwing, allowing them to show their appreciation for the people that they truly care for even if it is difficlut for them to find time with their heavy workloads.