This work has its origins in the first Gulf War; when CNN was showing the war unfold in real time and in graphic detail. The pre-war propaganda and the “news” following this had a profound impact on my life here in Canada. Over the course of the over two decades since, the news has evolved from being truly news with in-depth analysis to editorial commentary and even worse, infotainment.

This work attempts to capture the daily dialogue I have with the world around me. The influences that move me through the myriad of challenges in our modern world. I have a very strong sense that the ongoing questions and concerns I experience daily are shared by all of us.

As I have been gathering these headlines over these past months, I think about how tuned in the population really is about current affairs. Do we understand the references these headlines allude to? What topics are we following on a daily basis? What dominated the year, crisis or money or something else entirely? How does the media editorialize the news and how do we, the viewer?

These pieces compel one to engage, they make you think, react, question. There is no room for ambivalence; seeing the images of Nelson Mandela and Pope Francis, radiating goodness, hope and serenity, the wonderful traits of the human experience versus Rob Ford and a picture of arrogance and defiance. Images involving unthinkable horrors endured by humans in the here and now, not some distant and remote past. The headlines that describe children in CAR being beheaded and cannibalism being used as revenge in the year 2014. Watching a protest in the Ukraine devolve into a bloodless coup in Crimea, who would have imagined how these stories unfold?

I hope this piece gives the viewer a chance to see in a comprehensive way the current world around us. To follow all of those stories we are bombarded with and see them together and over time. I know these pieces will engage the viewer and provoke discussions and that is my objective.

I have been weaving a tapestry whose threads dictate to me where to be placed, I am a passenger on this journey through time and I hope to take the viewer along for a while.