The Surface of Behaviour, 1988

71.5" x 97" installed

acrylic on canvas, colour photograph, cibachrome and Sheila Ayearst oil painting

Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario

This is a four-part work made up of two paintings and two photographs. The individual pieces are:

a) A colour photograph of a framed watercolour painting by an unknown artist of my grandmother as a young woman. The actual painting is part of an earlier work, For the Audience, 1986, to which this work is related in both structure and subject matter.

b) An oil painting of myself from 1985, done in a deliberately traditional style by Toronto artist Sheila Ayearst. Its source is a photograph which she took of me.

c) A black acrylic painting which I did in 1987. It paints out my own failed painting from 1984, traces of which can still be seen beneath the black paint.

d) A cibachrome photograph of a detail of a collaborative work, Materia, from 1986. I rollered white latex randomly over a graphite drawing of myself by Toronto installation artist Elizabeth MacKenzie. This refers to the work Elizabeth does to obliterate her wall drawings at the end of an exhibition in order to return the gallery to its original state.