As a Canadian artist living in Ecuador, the question of home has been a recurring theme in my work. I need to feel an affinity with my physical surroundings as they affect both the way I live and the way I make art. The geography of Ontario, Canada, - the lakes and rivers, pine and granite of my youth - feeds my soul. But the palm trees and breaking waves, in front of my house in Ecuador, do as well.
I was born in Peterborough, Canada. After studying Fashion Design at Ryerson University in Toronto and later completing an honours degree in Fine Art at the University of Guelph in 1979, I moved to Ecuador. I wanted to develop my art away from the mainstream, with all its confines, dictates and pressures. Losing the Canadian winter was part of the deal. What was to have been a two-year hiatus became my life.
For the first two years in Ecuador I taught at the International schools in Quito and in Guayaquil. In 1981, my mentor and friend, Dick Maplesden, offered me free lodging outside the small coastal town of Bahia, Manabí on the condition that I try to make it as an artist. That was the beginning.
Not long after, I moved north to the fishing village of Cojimies, where I lived for five years without electricity or running water. For part of this time I lived on the island of Cojimies without a boat or any boat service to the main-land. During this period of intense isolation I developed my own iconography, moving from colourful abstract watercolours to realistic renderings of the sea and eventually to collage using materials found in nature.
In 1986 I returned to the Andes. For the next 18 years I lived in a valley outside of Quito, still without electricity or running water. My surroundings continued to supply me with materials for my art - bark, bones, cactus, dried leaves, broken glass, rusted metal. The capital city offered many venues to exhibit my work
In 2004 I returned to the coastal province of Manabí where I'd had my beginnings as an artist. I currently live in a bamboo and thatch house overlooking the Pacific, just south of the beach town and fishing village of Canoa. The house, which I designed and built, won an award from the local municipality for "enhancing the beauty of the county." Most of the time now I have electricity and running water.
As well as painting and creating collage and sculpture, I teach art in my home to expats and locals. My students and I have mounted several exhibitions of our work here in this small coastal community, improvising gallery space where we can. In 2014, I was honoured to receive an Award of Merit from La Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí, Bahia campus, for "invaluable work in benefit of culture." More recently, in November of 2021, the municipality of San Vicente (my town) presented me with an award for Cultural Merit, at the celebration of the town's anniversary as the county seat.