Home Crisis

Artist Statement

The concept of “home” is deeply woven into how we come to know ourselves and where we belong. This idea, however, often feels fragile within a rapidly developing city and the lives it contains. Home Crisis is a series of oil paintings that reflects on this shifting landscape, tracing the emotional reality of places where home can feel both grounded and precarious.

I was drawn to houses that feel lived-in and specific—places shaped by care, time, and quiet individuality—and I found myself seeing them as they changed. In Vancouver, and in many cities, these forms are shifting rapidly, often before they can fully be seen or remembered. Homes once built with affordability in mind now exist within a vastly different reality, sold for prices beyond the reach of most residents or replaced entirely by larger developments. These modest structures not only provided access to homeownership but came to shape a recognizable visual identity for the city itself. Now they stand as markers of a shifting economy and a disappearing way of life.

These paintings inhabit that tension. They hold homes in a state of quiet attention, as the ground beneath them feels increasingly unstable. Through careful mark-making and heightened colour, the paintings carry a sense of beauty—echoing the way our city presents itself—yet beneath this surface lies a quieter, more shadowed sadness. I seek to evoke not only how these spaces appear, but how they are felt—the familiarity they offer, and the loss that lingers at their edges. As the city transforms at an accelerating pace, the memories held within these structures risk fading with them. These works become a way of holding onto those traces, reflecting not just the buildings themselves, but the histories and lives that pass through them.

This work is also shaped by personal experience. When asked “where is home,” I often find the question difficult to answer. Through these paintings, I am trying to locate that answer for myself, finding connection across many spaces rather than in one. Having moved through Vancouver under the pressures of its housing crisis, I have come to understand home as something both deeply rooted and unexpectedly fragile. Included in this series are houses that trace my own path through the city, each one marking a distinct period of life, a set of attachments, and a shifting sense of belonging.

Home Crisis asks what it means to belong in a city whose face is continually shifting. As familiar homes disappear and communities become harder to sustain, the idea of home migrates—held not only in place, but in memory, relationships, and shared experience. These paintings attempt to hold that complexity, reflecting both the endurance of community and its growing vulnerability.