The look says it all

Galerie Youn
Montreal, 2022

The look says it all is a series of paintings that explores the act of looking, charting the differences between "looking at" and "looking in". The conflict of being apart from something and a part of something has been intensified by the isolation of recent years and the need for intimacy that pervades our digitally-driven lives. The paintings address this conflict and face the viewer with both feelings of escape and solace.

Wide-open compositions induce a state of calm. The placid panoramic landscapes, often painted in the serene hues of dusk and dawn, invite one to simply look at the horizon: a moment of quiet contemplation. Other works — a car crash glimpsed through a window or a prime-time boxing match enjoyed from an old recliner — place the viewer apart from the action: a witness to the debacle. Magnified figures of flowers bring us in. There is no distance between the viewer and the paintings. We become a part of the scene. Close and intimate. It overwhelms us.