Group of Seven Environmental Distortions

As a Canadian the landscape paintings of the “Group of Seven” where the very first paintings that I seriously explored through reproductions in our art history books. These glossy replications of the Landscape I grew up in  became a  personal way for me to explore themes created in the “Generation Series”. This later on-going painting project is an attempt to explore the ideas of the first series more directly through actual facsimiles of art history, paint and real experience. Reporductions of the Group of Sevens famous works are digitally manipulated with a scanner and the effects reproduced in paint.  Although this latest attempt is a direct descendant of Malcolm Morley’s famous works, my paintings will expand into technologically updated concerns of distortion and perception. In addition my paintings were conceived and often painted in many of the same locations in Ontario that the Group of Seven Painters would have found themselves. Although the same area, environemntal distresses, have permanently changed the Canadian landscape and this work poetically addresses those concerns.