For the most part my images start with a photograph taken with my PENTAX DSLR – many of them using recyled ‘prime’ lenses from older PEN

TAX film-based SLRs. These can be picked up quite cheaply and typically have better optics than most consumer-grade lenses. Most often the quality of the image is largely irrelevant however, since I tend to convert these detailed bit-mapped images into vector-based images using CorelDRAW’s built-in vector tracing capabilities.

I try simplify and remove detail to let the underlying shapes and colours emerge.

At any one time I have a number of

series going on – each linked thematically. These I package into ‘Exhibitions’ – the first of which – DIGITAL JAM – was exhibited at Douglas College in 2009.

WORKING was selected to exhibit at the CONTAINER ART show – Vancouver PNE – August 20 to September 4, 2011.
A third exhibition – AWAY – is starting to take shape with me. It pulls together scraps of memory – mine and those of our human collective taken from old photos etc . The title was suggested by the way that Newfoundlanders refer to their people living ‘away’ – when they leave home to find work.

The simplification that I try and achieve with my tracing of bitmaps into vector images resembles what our human memory does when it looks at places from ‘away’…