I made this painting, (or should I say alter my ego Eugene Knapik made this painting?) back in 1998 and exhibited it, along with a group of very small oil paintings, in an exhibition in Toronto called Canadian Shield. The exhibition was a large-scale group show that Tuffy P and I and a few other artists organized. The Source is quite a large diptych. I don’t have the actual dimensions at my fingertips but I’d say the panels are about 6 feet tall, making the whole painting something like 10X6. In my imagination, this painting has so much pent up energy, ready to awkwardly explode out, it seems even bigger)

The Source obviously wasn’t a new theme. The most famous painting called The Source was by Gustave Courbet, painted in 1868. I certainly wouldn’t compare my clumsy efforts to a fantastic painter like Courbet. At the same time, I was very aware of his version, even though I’ve only ever seen it in photographs. Years later I made a group of three tondos (circular paintings) on the same theme. The small paintings in Canadian Shield, which I suppose were much more overtly or obviously tied to the land, were well received. Curiously, this larger painting was lost in the exhibition, and the only feedback I received about it was some harsh criticism from a few good friends. Still, when I painted this one, I was very pleased with the results and it resonates with me even today. I still have this painting in storage. I haven’t thought about exhibiting in a while (although I have plenty of paintings that have never seen the light of day), but one day I wouldn’t mind getting this one out again. Maybe in the fullness of time it will be seen a little differently.

The Source was one of a group of paintings I did using acrylic and acrylic spray enamel. Another example from the previous year, 1997, was Shack Nasty.

This one, also a fairly large painting, has a home. It hangs in the living room of my friends Jill and Scott. When I was at their house over Christmas and looked at this painting, it transported me back in time to the day this painting, which I had struggled with for weeks, quickly came together. There were a couple other paintings I made at the time using some spray enamel too – one called Beef Trout Karaoke and another called Getting the Fuck out of Dodge – both paintings that I later destroyed.