Dreams Of Knowing, 1986-1988

This series of fifteen drawings began when I moved to Toronto from Victoria in 1986. It was produced for a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1988. Each 40 x 60 inch mixed-media drawing is on 300 pound Arches watercolour paper.

Dreams of Knowing was the first of a group of projects that conflates many of my interests: abstraction, grids, text, appropriation, the observed world, narrative and thinking lessons. I am interested in everything involved in the "action" of making art, and art that is about the thinking process of art making.

In these works, I am concerned with the impossibility of definitive scientific knowledge of almost anything. For example, during my lifetime popular conception of many things, from God to dinosaurs, has changed considerably.

In this series, visual and textual information is presented on surfaces that vaguely resemble chalkboards, giving the drawings a pedagogic appearance and reading. I intend them to be read as much as viewed. Each is a stream-of-conscious layering of ideas and information about the world.

Besides the original exhibition, the series has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Algoma and the Northumberland Gallery. Individual works have been exhibited elsewhere, including an auction of contemporary Canadian art in Paris, France and at the Surrey Art Gallery. About half the series has been collected by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Art Bank and private collectors in Canada, New York City and Switzerland.