Artist Statement
Artist Statement – (Summer 2010)
During my aviation career I became fascinated by the behavior of passengers sitting in window seats. Miles above the earth, few people ever looked out, but near the ground mums, dads, company directors, film stars, pop idles all suddenly became lost within the new world they were viewing. It was not uncommon for spare window seats to be filled by passengers swapping to experience the view.
As a child I did climb things, and a fascination with elevated views played a large part in pursuing a career as a pilot. But the passenger response I observed remained a mystery until watching my own children unlocking their imaginations as they created their first worlds with building blocks across the floor. Everything for a child is new, and the excitement or seeing something for the first time fuels imagination, fascination, a hunger to learn, to question to explore. And these first acts of creativity are experienced not from the level at which we will enter and exist within the real world, but from slightly above.
I developed the polepics system so I could explore the world from a new perspective, a perspective that would present to us for the first time, what we think we are so familiar with; and open our minds to a full dialogue with the landscape, the environment, the world in which we live. From above we take the time to experience and explore the beauty and significance of the ordinary, beauty and significance our busy lives all to often don’t normally notice at all.
STEVEN DRAPER
Selected Private/Public Collections
- Huff Estates Winery/Lanny Huff
- Quinte West
- County of Prince Edward
- Sandbanks Provincial Park