I had to leave Toronto to see it. I moved to Toronto at 19 for art school. Upon graduation at 23 I received a Greenshields grant and spent a year in Europe, I returned and then with a Sauza Award at 25 studied and travelled in Mexico for 3 months and finally at 27 spent nearly 4 months in Japan on another Greenshields grant.
The sketchbook drawing above I made after returning from Europe and Mexico. I was working at the Eaton’s Centre selling sporting goods. This was the view across the street. I was focused on developing my artwork, and I was doing some illustration commissions, as I planned my trip to Japan.
When I returned from Japan, Toronto took on a whole new character. I began doing onsite drawings of the neighbourhoods and industrial areas. I wanted the architecture to speak. I started constructing 3D pieces and cutting out shaped boards.
The only people in these drawings were on billboards…cropped and anonymous. Space and scale—-2 things I had never considered as a student were foremost in my thinking. I remember the drive home from the airport and each time the width of the highway and the characterless industrial parks exuded their own culture shock.
My writing at the time was focused on our disconnection from our environment, my work was large oil pastel drawings on paper and oil paintings on shaped Masonite.
The figure returned in my work as my illustration work started to make more demands on my time.
It was just a short time that I worked on these ideas in the late 1980’s and it really was my way of returning to Toronto and a passage through the unique influences of these 3 journeys. I know that each of these experiences left their mark in my work and my thinking. I’m just glad that I have a record of this young artist struggling to make sense of their work through the city they live in, and finding their way home.