Palimpsests
– 2025

The Brockton Point lighthouse sits just inside the entrance to Burrard Inlet, on the northeast corner of Stanley Park, and is surrounded by a large embankment wall. Out for a walk one day, I started looking at all the graffiti etched in the weathered embankment walls. Years of locals & tourists leaving their marks, overwriting the marks of others. Much of the graffiti has been almost erased by weather and time, while some has been pressure washed away in a spate of maintenance.

I just saw it as layers and layers of human made doodles on the wall of a human made structure overlaid with the natural weathering of sea, sun, and moss, creating an abstract tableau…

Graham Gilmore. Franz Kline. Robert Motherwell… all created randomly by accretion and human impulse.