Images from Beirut

After Cairo, I moved to Beirut, and this environment had a significant impact on my use of color and subject matter. Lebanon is a stunning country with beaches, mountains, cities, villages, and ancient sites. All of this is packed into a tiny country (compared to Canada, my home), and the variety does not stop with the geography. The people in Lebanon are highly diverse and regional as well. My greatest challenge was to find some commonality, what ran through all of this tying the people and place together, if anything. I began a series of color studies, taking for influences the intensely various qualities of sunlight and how it changed the colors of the natural and urban environments. As opposed to Cairo, my palette expanded into a much wider range. After a time, I began to notice something with the people. There seemed to be a tremendous sense of waiting, as if the answers were just around the corner. Political malaise, international interference, economic instability, and sectarian differences would all be worked out, perhaps tomorrow but soon. I felt a sense of unrealized potential that had little outlet within society, and along with this sense of waiting, I noticed the great love of diversion in many forms. Outdoor activities, comparing styles, looking each other over, up, and down, mobile phones, comparing ailments and medications, and an active nightlife were all participated in to divert attention from the boredom of waiting. This was the complexity I was after with my work. I still don't feel as if I have got it just yet and much of the works are still being sifted through and altered.