New Works

The pieces in New Works were all completed six months before the exhibition. Before that, Kempton Dexter, his wife Sandy, and their three daughters lived in Bowser on Vancouver Island. The paintings reflect both the urban environment he lives in and his family life in the east end. These paintings are small and were done in his living room among his daughters and wife. The frames are painted onto the surface enclosing the subject and tunnelling the viewer into the work. Over the dozen years Kempton has been painting and sculpting, two things remain the same: the subject matter always reflects his life, his family and friends, and the people and images he sees every day around him. Also they are always completed with found materials and surfaces. This is both a statement on the throw away society we live in and a need for Kempton to transform another people's garbage into something more. He has used anything from political posters to pizza boxes in his effort to produce images that mean something to him. The works are paradoxical, the viewer never knows what is meant as humorous and what is deadly serious. The tensions this alone creates expands his paintings out of the purely personal to a place where we all can see ourselves in the work.