Philoscope series

(Longing and Belonging)

Although I have made Montreal my home, I am originally from Vancouver. My family and many of my oldest friends live there; I visit regularly and have a strong emotional attachment to the place and its geography. I regularly visit various web cams of the city as a way of connecting with the location and the people I know there as well as with my memories of the place.

Viewing these images evokes a complex mix of emotions in me. Depending on my mood and what I see, the images can provoke strong feelings of longing, nostalgia, contentment or familiarity. Sometimes it’s a pleasurable experience and sometimes it’s a painful kind of melancholic compulsion.

Over a period of two years I collected still images from various Vancouver webcams. I began to download the images that I found the most affecting—whether due to the fact that they marked certain events (i.e.: on Christmas day, my mother’s birthday, etc) or simply because of the feelings/memories they evoke

The Philoscope paintings are based on these images. With these paintings, I wanted to depict the feelings provoked by these “real time” images of a location to which I am profoundly both connected and disconnected.