The Naked Silo

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2007 When looking for suitable backgrounds for the paintings around the Bay & King area in Toronto, I rode my bike behind the big black towers of the TD Centre and discovered a courtyard where cows were just laying around. Granted, they were bronze sculptures , but their presence was surreal and, naturally, I had to incorporate at least one of them. The CN Tower isn't visible from that vantage point, but I wanted to fill the negative space between the buildings and reinforce that this series is set in Toronto. Part of my  Meat Matters  series.

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2007 The extreme low angle of this allows the negative space between the skyscrapers to create "crosshairs," effectively targeting the bloody side of beef on the business woman's shoulder. Keeping in line with the surreal and stylized nature of this series, I chose to keep the drips here stylized as well, falling parallel in relation to the actual canvas, rather than being in realistic perspective, falling from the meat towards the viewer. Part of my  Meat Matters  series.

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2007 Sometimes my paintings are made up of photos from different shoots –deliberately taken separately for whatever reason– to be composited later, as in this series. I rode my bike down to the financial centre in Toronto one summer to shoot the "background plates" of the tall office towers. I then shot my models in my studio to match, miming the cow parts by holding pillows. The blood was improvised based on various research images. Part of my  Meat Matters series.

40" x 30", oil on canvas, 2007 Being an omnivore and growing up in the big city of Toronto, I began to feel very disconnected with the source of the food that I ate in the last few years I was living there. Using The Sacred and the Propane as a starting point, I developed the Meat Matters series as a way to confront (and confront others about) the nature of our food –that is, living things that die for our sustenance, rather than simply being dead objects bought in a grocery store. The intent of these paintings isn't to say "don't eat meat" or "don't kill animals," but rather "if you do  [directly or indirectly]  kill animals for their meat, consider and respect them." The concept of the first few paintings of this series was to depict young business men and women in the financial district of Toronto (around Bay & King) fending for themselves and slaughtering cattle to take home and consume. It evolved slightly with Butcher...