Brian is an abstract expressionist landscape artist and a member of the Portal Artists Society in Vancouver, BC.

A 2007 BFA graduate of the University of Calgary in painting and printmaking, his mixed-media work explores the friction between urban life and the natural world. Using gestural brushwork and custom-mixed glow-in-the-dark pigments, he captures ephemeral moments; the dance of light on water, the resonance of the Aurora Borealis in paintings that emit and reflect light long after the viewer has moved on.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My practice primarily explores themes of ephemeral moments, and humanity’s relationships with each other and the environment. With a focus on pure expression that clears my mind and allows me to focus on colour and composition. As a child of the 80s and 90s I am naturally drawn to bright neons and vivid colours and explore that passion with acrylic paint, ink, marker, spray paint, water colour, and custom mixed glow in the dark pigments on canvas to create works that come to life with extra depth due the way they both emit and reflect light.

The works emerge from a sustained practice of meditative, flow-state painting rooted in the landscapes, ecological tensions, and human conflicts that define our present moment. I build layered surfaces that reward both immediate emotional response and prolonged looking. Each piece holds contradiction without resolving it — natural beauty and industrial damage, stillness and turbulence, cultivation and destruction. The body leads before the mind follows. What remains on the canvas is less a record of thought than of feeling made physical.

My work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver; The Nickel Gallery, The Phi Centre, Glass Door Gallery, Slice of Life, The Beaumont Studios, and for the past 4 years during the East Side Culture Crawl. My art installation “Glow in the Draw” —A giant canvas with glow in the dark paint and UV flashlights that allows participants to draw with light the slowly fades away — has exhibited at various events across BC, receiving grants from the Kindle Arts society and Basscoast (Creative BC).