I am a watercolour painter who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the Atlantic Ocean. I have sailed the Atlantic Coast for years, as a crew member and navigator. In 1989, I began to paint watercolour landscapes about the sky and the weather. As the series developed, my sailing experience became my subject matter: my paintings began to be about sailing, the coast, storms and passage making.
Sailing on a small boat gives me an unusual way of looking at the landscape of Nova Scotia. I see large skies, narrow bands of land, and colours affected by the watery atmosphere. As navigator, I tried to keep an image of the chart in my head, especially in thick weather. As a result of this, I often use actual nautical charts, or paint interpretations of charts, in my works. In addition, I paint waves and weather in an intuitive manner. In these paintings I am thinking of shapes, movement and atmosphere at sea.
As time went on my subjects expanded to include the coast and the many lighthouses found on Nova Scotia’s shores.
Recently, I have begun an entirely different kind of painting: a mixed media series based on the silhouette of a dove. These paintings evolved out of design projects I have done for St. Andrew’s United Church in Halifax.