The basis for this group of paintings was the passing of my family’s fifteen year-old Beagle, Emo. Soon after he died I became less concerned with contemporary aesthetics and more concerned with what I was feeling about his death, and life. The color is chosen to reflect Emo’s colors -white, black and tan, though he was mostly white at the end. Those three colors are accented with color memories from each of the twelve years I knew him (my wife had him three years before we met). I want to tell a story in paint, and in the case of these paintings I want to tell the story of Emo.

This memorial in paint was a departure for me, in that I had been doing representational – shadow portraits for close to eight years before this series began. I either painted over shadow portraits I had begun at the time of his death, or started new works representing each year in his life. I do not know how the paintings translate to the viewer, but I believe that the autonomy of abstraction captures the life of Emo.

Abstract Expressionism and Automatism were both also inspirations for these paintings. In recent years I had saw exhibitions of both movements (Abstract Expressionism at The Walker Art Center in Minnesota, and Automatism at The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto). Both had impressed me with the freedom, and expressiveness of form that I was repressing in my own work. Another thing I liked looking at in the work of the Abstract Expressionists and Automatists was paint quality. The thick gesture of the strokes was something seductive that needed to be embraced instead of tinkered at (as in my previous shadows).