Tell us a little about your recent award from the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour; and congratulations!
The Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour (CSPWC) is the only national watercolour society in Canada. It was formed by two members of the Canadian Group of Seven (A.J Casson and Franklin Carmichael) along with 10 other artists in 1925 and so has been in continuous existence for 80 years. Each year they hold a national juried show called "Open Water". Last year I sent an entry into the show for the first time. I was thrilled to have my painting "Surfacing" accepted to the show, then felt honored when I was notified a few weeks later that the painting was awarded the H.K. Holbein Award for Innovation in Watercolour. Surfacing can be viewed on several different levels depending on your outlook. If you take it as realism then it portrays the wave-distorted view of a lighthouse reflected in water - the view you would get if you were surfacing from a dive by looking up from underwater. If you take it with a surrealistic viewpoint, then to me it portrays a dream state in which one dream morphs smoothly into another, linking a bit of eroticism with lighthouses.