Born in Trinidad, West Indies, I immigrated to Canada with my family in 1965 at age 14. I received an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and was accepted into the graduate program in 1976. I later made the decision to pursue another longtime passion, to study psychotherapy, and am a practicing psychotherapist in Toronto.
I paint because I want to capture a reality I see and which others can recognize. I feel that recognition constitutes a sharing of perspective and therefore a communication and a connection.
I am fascinated by water and paint it often. It reflects the physical reality, shaping it with undercurrents determined by its surroundings: the wind; the terrain over which it flows - its boundaries; the light; its depth. Vulnerable to sudden changes, its volatility is evident in the way it distorts the "reality" reflected or submerged in it. The refraction of light and shape seems to constitute another reality – a parallel reality created by intention. As widely observed it is a metaphor for the dynamic world of the human psyche.
I love to paint and have done so all my life. My private practice as a psychotherapist affords me the flexibility of time to paint and, most importantly, truly inspires and informs my creative process. The similarity between practicing psychotherapy and creating art is that one must suspend “knowing” in favor of allowing something new to reveal itself. My work as an artist, especially when dealing with subject matter we all “know”, involves the struggle to avoid succumbing to the need to direct and control the process in order to achieve a preconceived outcome. I want to remain open to possibilities…
Toronto, 2009