I am drawn to the places where there is no context for paying attention. The experience involves stepping outside of social expectation and
conditioned response. A subversive theme is beginning to emerge from the in-between spaces represented in this work, Into the 905: the
View from the Car, this time, a big box mall alongside a line of hydro towers. These images are intended to express a deeper meaning than
the mere recording of appearances: the underlying political topology that is normally overlooked or misunderstood. An observational painting
practice is less an accumulation of technical skills and more about an increasing ability to be present.

The big box mall is an institution in control of its access and activity. Marshall McLuhan talks about buildings as self-contained communication
systems in which the very architecture is a dynamic medium that conveys the message of a high demand for social order under the hierarchy of
a supreme power (in this case, the corporations) He says that ‘architecture shapes and rearranges the patterns of human association and
community.’ How does something as imposing as a big box mall or the monolithic hydro towers with their river of current and chaos of elegant
lines fall so beneath our notice as to become almost invisible? Institutions operate to control what we are able to see. To view a building as a
medium enables us to see it’s social function.

Images