"I grew up on the prairies of Western Canada, a rather sparse environment with little colour during the long winter months. The landscape was open and severe, the sky enormous.... Here on Vancouver Island, we are enveloped in a comparative lushness year-round, and the environment tends to swallow you up in its greenness; the sky almost disappears, everything is growing all the time. I am fond of both places, yet I've never been interested in painting the landscape. I feel a need to inject intense colour, pattern, and a sense of celebration into everything I paint. I want the ordinary to be exotic, the black dog to be red, the pears to be blue. My focus has been colour, people, animals and… still life. More than anything, I want my images to evoke a sense of well-being and goodness… I believe that documenting social and political concerns in the visual arts is important, but I feel it is equally important to pursue the creation of work that simply makes you feel good."