Plunge Series














This body of work is titled, "Plunge" and it is oil on panel.

These paintings capture a person free-falling into a body of water and then returning to the surface. My good friend Bethany modeled for me and she actually fell into a pool hundreds of times as I tried to capture the photographs that became the basis of this work. The paintings are a sequential and the are titled:
  1. Justice
  2. Fall
  3. Still
  4. Return
  5. Restored
Justice is something we all desire. When someone does us wrong, or life doesn’t go the way we think it should, we can get angry and feel a desire to get revenge, get even, or live in a state of anger towards that person or situation. Often, these feelings of anger are completely justified. Justice, making someone or something pay for their crimes, gives us a right to be angry. However, living in a state of justice where we exercise our rights to be angry simply leaves us in a state of anger. Why would we want to live our lives in a state of anger? Why stay there? Often we forget we have the option to surrender our rights to get justice and let anger go. In giving up our justified right to be angry, we have the opportunity to forgive and plunge into grace, peace, serenity, and ultimately, joy.

Surrendering our right to be angry is not always easy and requires a complete jump into dangerous territory where we lose our own perceived sense of control. When we give control over to Love, we find ourselves in this stillness beneath the raging surface waters of surrender. By leaving those burdens of anger and justice behind, we can rise to the surface, baptised and cleansed with a renewed mind full of peace and joy.  This process of surrendering to Love and God’s way of forgiveness is something I have found I can choose daily, and be constantly restored to my true self – the way He always intended for me to be.

These oil paintings were created for my senior exhibition and they culminated my time at Redeemer University College. They have been shown at the Redeemer Art Gallery in Ancaster, B Contemporary Gallery in Hamilton and The Salvation Army New Hope Community Church in Orangeville.