2023
Oil and acrylic on canvas
66” x 12”

The desperate error
to bury sorrow
in a vacuum,
and leave it there.

The third of the four pieces in the ‘Poem’ series. I wanted this piece to mimic the breathlessness of grief. The heavy weight on your chest. Like the air gets sucked out of your lungs.

The Station Gallery curator, Olex Wlasenko, mentioned that this ‘Poem’ series seemed to be inspired by some of Francis Bacon’s work. And I think that’s true. He’s one of my favourite artists, and I get the same feeling of relentless weight when I look at his work. The bleak physicality of Bacon’s work is evident, and I’m sure a good amount of that spilled over into these last three pieces, and the one coming tomorrow.

Let me tell you though, this particular piece – with its vast emptiness – was an absolute terror to photograph. I was getting glare every which way, which of course greys out the black. I even had trouble with the detail of the echoes figures, so the colour is off on that photo too.

I’m not sure the photos do it justice, and I had to play with the lighting quite a bit using various photo editors. But hopefully it turned out alright.