Artist's Statement

My paintings develop from looking both outward at the appearance of the subject, and inward at what the subjects means, both to me individually and in a wider, symbolic sense. The paintings weave together these two kind of observation: perception and representation.

All are a result of reaction to the formal elements of the subjects, which spur me to explore them with paint. When I moved from Newfoundland to Waterloo, I began to paint my new environment to make it familiar to me. For example, The Computer Graphics Lab at the University of Waterloo was painted during the summer, when I was spending most of my time painting outdoors (green, green, green). The cool dark interior of the lab, with its glowing blue screens and absorbed inhabitants, was a refreshing and fascinating space. I had the sense of constant, furious activity humming through the lab, invisible to the eye. I was interested in looking at the effects that using computers as working tool have: how the workspace becomes less a physical space for the body, instead like a manifestation of the internal world of the mind: as the visual effects of the computers, the palette of colours in the lab, and the various illuminated details, combine with the shadowy darkness.

These pictures are metaphors in form for the layers of sensation that one experiences at any one time. In the portraits, the people who sat for me determined how they positioned themselves, the setting, and the length of time and frequency of the sittings. All of these chance elements affected the formal combinations of paint that ended upon the surface of the canvas. The still lives are attempts to make pictures of the mesh of interacting elements - form, colour, associations and symbolic meanings - that cohere in objects. To see more of my paintings, please visit the website about my work, www.joannastrong.com.

Joanna Strong