There have been two phases in my life where I lived in New York City. The first defined the beginning of my career as a gallery artist, from 1983 to 1995. The second was from 2006 to 2008, immediately after I left my role as a Senior Art Director at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to work on freelance projects for Sir Paul McCartney and other entertainment and corporate clients.

'A Certain Rhythm' is part of an ongoing series of images that are based on photographs I took around New York City in 2007. 

New York City is a 'mythological place', a focus for movies and songs, and a city where people from all over the world go to creatively invent themselves. 

This was certainly the case for me.  Everyone who lives there, or who has ever lived there, carries with them their own version of the city; what it means to them and where it stands in their own cultural landscape. 

I did a lot of walking while i lived there, and in my travels I would often notice shapes, textures, bits of graffiti and whatever that just seemed like works of art in their own right. Or at least... pieces of art. I took hundreds of photographs.

Many of these bits and pieces became the elements of collages that I later assembled in Photoshop. These make up the ongoing project I mentioned earlier, entitled 'New York City Re-Imagined'. This is the first of those images to be completed as a full scale mixed media painting, completed in June, 2021.