I’ve devoted a lifetime to my work as a dancer, a singer, a visual artist, and a teacher of the creative process. Somewhat unusually, I often combine these  in a single work. But whether I do or not, I try to remain alert to the raw, beautiful and strange — miraculous, in fact — details of this tragi-comic life. Although I continue to dance to this day, living in the country long ago bent me towards the making of visual art because the demands of art-making are very different from those of performance. 



My creative process has centered on a relationship to the everyday and hinged on the people, places and events around me. 

Being an improviser by nature, I experiment with materials both formal and found. I  incorporate them in ways that often take me by surprise in their final form.  I’m not interested in presenting a subject as its image falls on the retina of the eye. I rather try to  express its essence — the ‘feel’ of it.



Letting go of control — spontaneity and imperfection — these I try to capture.



What matters is to touch and be touched.
Nothing stays the same.










For as long as I can remember, I’ve had to contend with a surfeit of curiosity and a tendency towards delight in the world. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that the art form termed “assemblage”  came naturally to me as a kind of three-dimensional poetry-making.


Even before they take their final form, the discovery and collecting of found objects is a kind of adventure that needs no further justification. When I walk into my studio, where the shelves and walls are heavy with accumulation, it’s still for me like walking into my own museum. Each object has its history and each is waiting its turn to become part of an assemblage — a sculpture of parts connected and transformed.






During my years of art education and early years of art making, I didn't explore the installation form. However, when in 2010 I was invited to my first residency, installations  seemed the perfect fit. I describe three on the "Artist in Residence" page.











IMPERMANENCE
Galerie Art Plus
Sutton, Quebec
5th October - 29 October 2017


Ten years ago, an artist friend gave me a small packet of Italian drawing papers not much more than  4 by 3 inches each. I'd never worked so small and had no idea when or how I would use them.

Seven years later, I had 350 drawings of just one subject: clouds. During the intervening years, no matter where I was, at home or travelling, I'd go outside and fasten my attention on the clouds moving far above me, quickly drawing this cloud or that cloud, the dancer/mover in me connecting with and rendering their shifting, ephemeral shapes. They were everywhere, always, but could not be owned or held.



They were and are a reflection and manifestation of the impermanence of us all.













THE BOULEVARD SHOW


Le Boulevard des Arts is an annual event showcasing artists and artisans in their studios in the Frelighsburg region of Quebec's Eastern Townships. In September 2023 I participated in Le Boulevard by mounting an exhibition of recent work in my performance space near Pinnacle Mountain. My heartfelt appreciation to the many people who stopped by to look at, talk about, and (sometimes) buy the pieces on exhibit. Click on the image below for a quick YouTube look around the space while we were still in preparation.