“What do comics do with, and to, memory and what does memory do to comics? My current body of work is heavily inspired by Abstract Formalist comics, a movement starting in the early ’90s that plays on the idea of what ‘comics’ are and pushes the border of what ‘narrative’ is. I have always been interested in the play of narrative, especially with panels and their gutters. How the gutter explores the idea of the ‘fourth dimension,’ where our minds create our own narratives or situations by suggesting images in-between. The gutter can be the veins that hold the body of panels together, or it can suggest the passage of time. It allows the viewer to take an active role in the artworks. While I have my own narrative to tell, albeit a more abstract one, viewers can leave with their own story. Memory Lines, first appearing in an exhibition curated by Maeshelle West-Davies, is an exploration into abstract memory, how our memory and concept of it can shape who we are.
     “A few specific works of art have shaped this current exhibition. Stefanie Leinhos’s The Long Goodbye (2014) helped structure my current body of artworks both conceptually and aesthetically. Their presentation of a repetitive image of a hand static in place is spectacular. It is endless in concept, yet the original plates that created the prints no longer exist. I love the idea of destroying preciousness of an artwork. My works have my prints cut-up and pasted within the canvases. The print is no longer a precious object, turning the medium into a material.
     “The panel breaking and spacing for Memory Lines was inspired by Caza, a French artist, and his pop-psychedelic graphic novel Kris Kool (1979). While he isn’t really a part of Abstract Formalism, his structuring of panels and his use of colour to explore narrative help inspired how I structured the works.
     “Finally, I don’t think I would be the artist today without the comic gods the Hernandez brothers and their Love and Rockets series (1982 onward). I constantly re-read the issues, and I am in love with the pacing and storytelling.”