Thesis 2021

For my MFA thesis, I presented a series of four paintings (oil on canvas, 70" × 70" [178.8 cm × 178.8 cm] each) that depict clusters of oranges and text fragments within a larger orange circle. Using the image of the orange in addition to text, this body of work explores concepts of resistance to mechanical time. Each painting functions as a container for a unit of time-one month. The orange is a marker for a single day. The text draws from disparate sources to give context to these markers. This exhibition represents four months, the approximate duration of the warm season in Ottawa. Through varying degrees of density and layering, the images of oranges and text explore how the flow of time varies with each month. Changes in viewpoint, light quality, shadow casts, and the interaction of layering of each orange acts as a clue to the process (the time of the making of the painting). Painting each orange one at a time, over a long period of time, layered and changed, overlayed with text from headlines, peripheral signage, song titles, and internal dialogues reinforces the concept of the painting as a vessel filled with time. These paintings evoke a willful resistance or dropping out of mechanical time exposing its artificiality.