I began work on Enduring Markers in during an extended stay in Paris. Subsequently, I brought it to this stage of completion in β90 when I was able to spend eight months in France working full time on the project thanks to help from the Canada Council in providing me a Paris studio. From its nascence it has evolved and will continue to evolve and to occupy some part of my art activities.
I casually wondered what would be a suitable bouquet to place on the grave of a great artist as a personal symbol of homage. Four paintbrushes in the colours red, yellow, blue, green. Paint brushes are encoded with their own multi levels of signification and these specific colours, which in additive mixture make white life and in subtractive mixture make black death , on another level can become metaphysical referents to a wide range of concepts, metaphors and esoteric mysteries on life and death; relevant issues when contemplating the profound mystery of great art and the energy it continues to generate long after its creator has died.
Every significant work of art contains within it this existential mystery that no formal logic can define. Enduring Markers also alludes to some of my concerns about the extensive and complex polemics surrounding art and art making over the past century and the increasing speed with which the dialogue changes.
What have the past centuries taught us? What have we who have worked through a good part of this century as artists accomplished? In Enduring Markers I approach these issues, albeit somewhat obliquely. On May 21, , Vincent VanβGogh moved to AuversβsurβOise, the small village north of Paris, which throughout the 19th century had attracted many landscape painters.
It was there on July 29, , two days after being accidently shot or shooting himself with a pistol, he died in the Inn Ravouxβnow Maison de Van Gogh. This seemed a great opportunity to pay my homage and get some photographs. I wanted to indulge fully in the luxury of having a driver.
