Originals by The Dot Painter

People often call me 'the Dot Painter'

My self-taught, dot painting style is a contemporary approach to pointillism that allows me to explore how everything around us is connected.

When starting a painting, there are a few things I want to see before my brush touches a canvas.

• lots of natural light
• a feeling of harmony
• a story of promise

I love painting with all this swirling around my easel to connect with the spirit, the very soul of the image, as the canvas shares with me.

My collectors say my paintings bring them calming energies and often a sense of sanctuary as they explore the dots.

Treescapes

I paint many subjects, my 'go to' passion is trees. I spent my childhood years exploring the magic of woodlands and this experience fuelled my life long passion for trees and brings me endless inspiration on canvas today as I paint treescapes to share their light, calm and intimacy. When I wonder about what to paint, I simply ask the trees.

Acrylic on Canvas

My paintings begin with a dot and end with a dot. I use acrylic paint on canvas as acrylics are water based and dry quickly to allow me to paint the many layers of dots essential to my painting style. All this is a technique I taught myself about thirty years ago. I tried oil paints at the time but the oils required lots of drying time and this really slowed the flow of my creative process. It's only acrylic now.

Dots - Everything is Connected

When I look at the spaces around me, my focus is drawn to how everything is connected and my painting style of layered dots explores this endlessly. There really are no hard surfaces microscopically as atoms move and mingle just as the dots I paint move and mingle. There's no 'instruction manual' for this, I simply explore and listen to the canvas and colours for interpretive insights.

Light, Joy and Harmony

Natural light means a lot to me as an artist. My dad told me about 'natural light' decades ago when he was showing me painting images by Dutch Masters. I've always remembered this as light, sourced from the sun, flowing over places and through spaces creating shadows and dancing through the shadows. There is so much joy in natural light and I love painting sunlight pushing away the darkness and shadows around us. There always feels a promise of harmony in this.

Home and Travel

I live and create in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada. Here I'm surrounded my mountains, trees and wildlife. Over the years, I've shown my work internationally in Florence, Italy as well as in Paris, France.

From 2011 to 2016 in Paris, my paintings were exhibited annually at the jury entry Salon for Société National des Beaux-Art held in the Carrousel de Louvre. This is the same Claude Monet and his contemporaries battle with in the 1880's.

In 2021, the Académie Arts-Sciences-Lettres in Paris awarded me a Silver medal for my artwork accomplishment.

From the onset of the pandemic, I have significantly reduced my travelling and my public exhibitions. Currently, My paintings are only presented through social media and here on my website.

Over the Years

My birthplace is Vancouver, British Columbia. After completing university studies I was employed in the financial services industry. When I was 45 years old, I remember thinking, If I was 65 year old now, I could be doing what I really wanted to do." First, at the time I wasn't very clear about what I really wanted to do. But second, and more significantly, I realized that was actually wishing 20 years of my life away. This was a significant life moment for me, I began a process that took me away from financial services to become a self-taught visual artist painting with dots.