[Documentation of work produced within the Master of Fine Arts course]

Since I wrote my proposal in Canada two years ago, there has been a focussing of my work in certain areas, while other concerns have assumed a lesser significance in the body of the work. I had anticipated this when writing the proposal, aware that I must allow a flexibility to accommodate the changes I thought would accompany my introduction to a new culture. What was to be a maJor concern during the course, and something that my work had been dealing with before I left Canada, was the notion of man as creator and destroyer in a decaying environment. However I found that I could not continue to work as I had in Canada, as it seemed my new environment called for a reassessment of my working process, and only after such a reassessment have I been able to return to this theme. What I have been dealing with significantly in my work is how, as an artist, I have responded to a new environment with its many dimensions. My work has dealt with my adaptation to a familiar yet unfamiliar culture. I felt compelled to communicate my feelings of 'displacement' through the use of symbols that I believe have a universal significance. This was developed in work that uses the images of the tower, the head, and the storm tossed boat. The latter two in particular acted as vehicles for expressing the experience of the journey, whether it be the journey of an individual to anew land, or the universal journey through life. I would say that at the time I wrote the proposal I, to a degree, underestimated (although I had anticipated) the impact of a new environment, and the subsequent adaptations to it, on my work. The final series of paintings completed during the course has grown out of the exploration of the notion of the journey, departure and arrival, confrontation with a new culture or the unknown. The final series of drawings was born of my concern with man as destroyer and creator, reformulated, often through the symbol of the flame (fire symbolizes both destruction and the renewal that is made possible through this), and reborn in a new context. The Journey to a new place frequently brings with it the need to destroy much of what has constituted the past -- the things that applied in another place and time but are no longer relevant. In my own experience it has been necessary to destroy much m order to create anew.