Ted Polkinghorne
Nettoyage
October 17 to December 6, 2013

Nettoyage, the name of my exhibition is a word related to purging, cleansing and renewal. By chance I saw a newsprint photo of the aftermath of the 1996 forest fire at Charlotte Lake B.C. A forest fire makes us aware of regeneration, a renewal thru fire. Years ago, in my art making, I began using a sgrafitto technique of scratching into tinted layers of plaster on mahogany veneer panels. On seeing the photo I realized there was a relationship to the vertical/horizontal ‘warp and weave’ in the burned landscape and my marks in plaster. My four-panel sgrafitto work furthers the dichotomy between a charred landscape and a lively colour field. The series of conte′ on paper, inspired by the photo image of the devastating forest fire, became a meditation in drawing and the drawings retain that visual meditative quality.